Regulation (EU) No 1025/2012 (Standardisation Regulation) regulates the European standardisation system and explains how to use European standards for products and services.
Developing new standards requires a public-private partnership between the European Commission and the European Standards Organisations (ESOs); the Standardisation Regulation guides the division of roles and responsibilities.
The process requires that the European Commission requests a new standard from one of the ESOs – CEN, CENELEC and ETSI –, which will take care of the standard development.
To modernise the European Standardisation System, the European Commission proposed to amend the Standardisation Regulation as part of its European Standardisation Strategy of February 2, 2022.
The European Commission’s proposal
The European Commission proposal aims to amend the Regulation and sets a transition period of six months to allow the European Standards Organisations to adapt their internal rules to these changes.
According to the proposal, Article 10 of Regulation (EU) No 1025/2012 will demand ESOs to ensure that the “(a) decisions on the acceptance, refusal and execution of standardisation requests; (b) decisions on the acceptance of new work items; (c) decisions on the adoption, revision and withdrawal of European standards or European standardisation deliverables” will be “taken exclusively by representatives of the national standardisation bodies within the competent decision-making body of that organisation” (European Commission, 2022).
Which are the next steps?
The European Parliament and EU Member States have reached a political agreement on the Commission’s proposal.
Indeed, to ensure the EU’s policy ambitions on a resilient, green, and digital economy, the ability to shape international standards for digital products, processes and services as global benchmarks is essential.
Now the European Parliament and the Council have to adopt the new Regulation. Once it is adopted, the European standardization organisations will have to change their internal statutes to implement the governance according to the new legislation.
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Claudia Argenti
RA department
16/11/2022
References:
European Commission. (2022). Commission welcomes political agreement to improve the governance and integrity of the European standardisation system. Retrieved on 10/11/2022
European Commission. (2022). Proposal for a Regulation amending Regulation (EU) No 1025/2012 as regards the decisions of European standardisation organisations concerning European standards and European standardisation deliverables. Retrieved on 10/11/2022
Official Journal of the European Union. (2012). Regulation (EU) No 1025/2012 of the European Parliament and the Council of 25 October 2012 on European standardisation. Retrieved on 16/11/2022.