Key recommendations from the report include wider integration of environmental aspects, improving access of societal stakeholders to the standards development process and increasing their representation. The recommendations also promote the principles of inclusion, openness, transparency and balanced representation. Societal stakeholders regularly complain about the corporate dominance in the standardisation process.

Thousands of technical standards have an impact on the daily lives of EU citizens as they provide the technical specifications used by manufacturers and public authorities to prove that a product or a process meets legislative requirements.

Ralf Lottes, Secretary General of ECOS, the voice of environmental NGOs in standardisation, and a member of the expert panel said: “The EXPRESS report contains many valuable ideas and recommendations for the EU and national governments and standardisation bodies to implement. The European Committee for Standardization (CEN) already made valuable tools available to improve such integration. Unfortunately, despite certain frontrunners and CEN’s example, many National Standards Bodies have shown a complete lack of ambition in this area. I hope this will now begin to change.”

The report also recommends that Member States help improve the engagement of weaker stakeholders by providing resources for participation, since “the acceptability of standards depends to a large extent on the full involvement of all relevant parties.”

Doreen Fedrigo-Fazio, EEB Policy Unit Coordinator, said: “Environmental organisations support standardisation where it is the best regulatory option. We do, however, warn against political decisions being delegated to technical bodies where commercial interests often prevail over public interests due to the financial muscle of corporations.”

This report will be one of the elements feeding into the general revision of the legislative framework for European standardisation to be presented by the European Commission to European Council and Parliament in Spring

Link to report
European Standardisation bodies:
CEN: www.cen.eu
CENELEC: www.cenelec.eu
ETSI:  www.etsi.org