Commission unveils its new Standardisation Strategy

On 2 February, the European Commission presented its new Standardisation Strategy.

In light of the technological and environmental challenges that the coming years and decades will bring, the Commission wants to implement the Strategy to set the course for Europe to remain competitive globally, maintain its technological sovereignty and at the same time promote its core values through standardisation.

At the centre of the Strategy is a reform of the European standardisation system, in particular a governance reform of the three European standardisation organisations (ESOs), which are responsible for the development of European Standards (abbreviated EN) and composed of national standardisation bodies (NSBs), industry, SMEs and other public or private actors. The reform is intended to make the system more agile and flexible in addressing standardisation urgencies as well as more inclusive for SMEs and civil society. Alongside this, the focus of the Strategy is on a better coordination and strengthening of the European approach in the international arena.

For businesses the strengthening of the European standardisation system offers advantages and opportunities. European Standards can be used by businesses to ensure and demonstrate that their products comply with EU law, thus strengthening their competitiveness in the EU Single Market and globally. The reforms should also enable them to exert greater influence on the development of European Standards in the future and to gain easier access to them. Following further developments, the implementation of the Strategy should therefore be of great interest to many businesses.

What are European Standards?

European Standards are standards that are developed by one of the three ESOs (CEN, CENELEC, ETSI). The Strategy focuses on an important subset of these, namely harmonised European Standards. These are standards that are developed at the request of the Commission, to provide technical specifications needed for a product, service or process to comply with EU law. Once accepted, they become part of EU law, but their use by businesses remains voluntary.

As European Standards replace 34 different national standards in EU, EEA/EFTA and neighbouring countries they support the functioning of the EU Single Market by making it easy for businesses to show that their products, services or processes comply with EU law.

Components and key actions of the strategy

In addition to the 10-page Strategy paper the Commission shared the following documents as part of the Strategy:

• Proposal for an amendment of Regulation (EU) No 1025/2012 on European standardisation
• Report on the implementation of the Regulation (EU) No 1025/2012 from 2015 to 2020
• 2022 annual Union work programme for European standardisation

Among the actions proposed by the Commission are the following key actions:

• The Commission is proposing an amendment to the Regulation (EU) 1025/2012 which prescribes that the delegates of the NSBs must be the ones with decision-making power in each stage of the development of a harmonised European Standard. This addresses the uneven distribution of votes in some decision-making bodies of the ESOs.
• Complementing this, the ESOs are to make proposals on governance reform by the end of 2022 to promote the inclusiveness of the standardisation system.
• Particularly urgent European Standards are to be prioritised by the ESOs (e.g., standards for COVID-19 vaccine and medicine production, recycling of raw materials, low-carbon cement, clean hydrogen, chip certification and data). All priorities are identified in the annual Union work programme which will be updated annually as of now.
• A new High-Level Forum with representatives of Member States, ESOs, NSBs, industry, civil society and academia is set up, that will assist the Commission to anticipate priorities and coordinate European interests.
• The Commission will establish an EU Excellence Hub on Standards to better coordinate standardisation expertise within the Commission and other EU bodies and agencies. The “Chief Standardisation Officer” will steer the work of the Excellence Hub.
• For enhancing European leadership globally, the Commission plans to create a mechanism with Member states and NSBs to monitor, coordinate and strengthen European action in international standardisation activities (e.g., in fora such as ISO).
• A special focus will be on the international approach to internet standardisation. For this purpose, the Commission will introduce an EU internet standards monitoring website.
• The Strategy also aims to enable the next generation of experts by raising academic awareness on standards as well as to support scientists participating in EU-funded R&D projects with testing the relevance of their results for standardisation.

Next steps

The Commission has announced that it will immediately act on the standardisation urgencies reflected in the annual Union work programme by launching standardisation requests and engaging with the stakeholder communities. Moreover, by the end of 2022, the ESOs' proposals on governance reform can be expected. Apart from that, a time frame for most of the proposed actions is still to be determined.

As the proposal develops, businesses can keep up to date on the developing standards and may also be able to participate in the development process.

For more information contact Thomas Albermann

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