European Committee For Standardization

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The process of establishing new European standards is vigorous and involves specific steps including proposals, pubic comments, weighted votes, and implementation by CEN member countries.

Proposal

1. Any type of interested individuals, groups, or organizations can present a proposal for a European standard. The National Standards Bodies, European Free Trade Association, and European Commission present most standards proposals.
2. The most suitable European Committee for Standardization (CEN) committee takes into account the required time frame and available resources and decides whether or not to accept a proposal.
3. Once accepted, a proposal is converted to a standardisation project and assigned to a particular Working Group to compose a draft of the standard documents.

Public Comment and Weighted Vote Adoption

1. After a Working Group finishes the draft of a new standard, the documents are made public to enable outside parties to present their opinions. Throughout the stage of public commenting, all individuals that have a viable interest in the standard such as consumers, pubic officials, and manufacturers can present their opinion on the draft. The National Standards Bodies collects the comments and the CEN Technical Committee evaluates the responses.

2. The comments and opinions of the public are integrated into the revision of the draft and a final copy of the draft is created and presented to CEN Members to conduct a formal weighted voting procedure.

Adoption as a National Standard
Once CEN approves a standard draft, all of the National Standards Bodies implements the new European Standard as a duplicate national standard and removes any current national standard that clashes with the new standard. Therefore, once a new European standard is approved, it becomes a national standard in 31 CEN member nations.

European standards are sophisticated requirements that ensure products and services comply with certain specifications and they must undergo advanced procedures to ensure the safety and satisfaction of consumers and suppliers.

Embracing All Standards for Unity

It is reasonable to expect countries that operate business and offer services under the same government policies, climates and consumer cultures would also operate under similar standards. The need to evaluate and certify that products and services meet standards will improve economic advancements for all parties involved. The common standard system will secure European countries place in the global business economy as we receive more balanced trade efforts with businesses outside of our region.
There have been committees and boards for standards in most of the European countries for decades. With the realignment we need to seek a single unit of standard and agree on all commonalities that can strengthen the union. One way to do this is to address the benefits of each previous standards and bring them together under a single standard with oversight provided by European Organisation for Conformity Assessment. This common standard will function to deal with regional issues that relate to the delivery of services as well as products.

The European Organisation for Conformity Assessment differs from the European Committee for Standardization, which was founded in 1961. The EOCA seeks to utilize the strengths of the CEN but with improved oversight. Some strengths identified in the European Committee Standards is the industry specific standards such as the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) which covers electrical industries, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), that has made strides in the development of the telecommunication industry and the European Union, the European Free Trade Association
(EFTA) and Eastern Europe which has successfully overseen trade among 55 nations. Once the strengths of these are identified, the European Organisation for Conformity Assessment will seek to move all programs under one umbrella so the consumer will have an simplified way to identify if a company meets the expectations of the governing body that is suppose to provide consumer protection.

Development of An European Standard

Embracing All Standards for Unity

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