THE STANDARDIZATION PACKAGE – VIEW OF CEN-CENELEC

Friedrich Smaxwil CEN

EN and CENELEC as the three European Standard Organizations welcome the Communication and draft Regulation. Standardization is an important economic activity in Europe and globally. The launch of the package on 1 June offers the chance to focus attention on its virtues as a tool for economic and social

coherence. Separately for ICT and other issues, there was a long discussion and consultation process, culminating in

the EXPRESS report and the ICT White Paper in 2009. We contributed, and as a result the Communication and Regulation do take account of the practicalities. But it would be surprising if we had no reservations on the detail.

The proposals for improvement in the new package lay heavy emphasis on improving participation in and information on standardization for stakeholders. More emphasis is given on the contribution of SMEs, and the various societal stakeholders. We also see the welcome levelling of the playing field on service standardization. There is a new regime for public procurement, to allow for the recognition of certain ICT consortia specifications. The Commission would like to improve planning of work programmes and they request the ESOs to be more and more performant, for instance in terms of standardization speed.

The presentation will remind the audience briefly of the role of the ESOs, our pan-European network, how we work and what we do. More significantly, it will remind of the fundamental values underlying the system.

These values have been preserved in the package, which is why we are happy to support it overall. The ESOs have provided detailed comments on both documents, and the presentation will review these.

In particular, we welcome the retention of the basic principle that national delegations draw up European Standards, as the way to ensure that all relevant stakeholder and local interests are taken into account. Better planning of public processes at European level is also very welcome.

This said, we have some general principles we would like to see observed, and some more detailed improvements we would like to see. In particular, the Regulation needs some work on the definitions , and we miss the concept of standstill, of great importance for avoiding duplication of effort. Speed is one thing, but must not be achieved at the expense of quality. The list of national bodies is absent, surely needed to integrate them fully into the system. Care is needed about the participation of societal stakeholders – we welcome them but we should not give them any over-arching role in the decision process – and we must not neglect industry interests, they are our main shareholder.

To make the system work smoothly, we would like to see improved openness and transparency in the decision making process related to Commission standardization requests including mandates, and to amend the proposals to ensure ESOs and NSB participation in advisory committees. We should also avoid complex parallel mechanisms for ICT issues.

Concerning the ICT part, the obligations being placed on fora and consortia are less stringent than those on the ESOs, for instance the absence of national and international links or of participation of full stakeholder interests. However, we believe there is a natural synergy between ESOs and consortia – we provide the national dimension and the end-user participation - and can complement their activities. We would like the Commission to encourage this synergy, not create a parallel process that will not help transparency.

In conclusion, if the improvements we will outline can be adopted, this package offers a chance to involve more stakeholders more systematically, to increase openness and transparency, to integrate more closely the international dimension, improve links between standards, innovation and research, and to improve coherence at Commission level through a common standards programme. We should take this chance.

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