State of play, main conclusions, outlook

Evaluation of Regulation (EU) No 1025/2012 on European Standardisation

The evaluation identified overall no major problem in the application of the Regulation. However, some areas for improvement have been identified. Following the conclusion of the Joint Initiative on Standardisation (JIS) that aimed at promoting the coherent implementation of the Regulation through non-legislative actions in co-operation with the main actors of the European standardisation system, the Commission is now taking stock of the needed actions under the Package on the Standardisation Strategy of February 2022, which announces the revision of the Regulation 1025/2012. The same package contains a minor amendment of the Regulation which aims at improving the governance in ETSI.

Estimated savings and benefits

Costs: Since 2014, the EU financing of standardisation is about 18 million EUR per year. According to an estimation of the European Standardisation Organisations, the industry experts alone spend around more than 900 million EUR each year to participate in voluntary standardisation work at international, European and national level.

The Regulation did not add any additional costs to the European Standardisation System other than the participation of Annex III organisations (SMEs; consumers, trade unions; environmental interests) in European standardisation. These costs are partially offset by grants offered by the Commission to the corresponding organisations, which provide for an additional value to the European standardisation in terms of efficiency and effectiveness.

Benefits: A number of studies at national level indicate the economic benefits of standardisation in general. These benefits concern in particular increase of labour productivity growth between 27.1% and 37.4% and contribution to GDP growth between 23.5% and 28.4% (Studies, publication year, Member State: DIN, 2000, Germany; AFNOR, 2009, France; Cebr, 2015, UK).

REFIT Platform

In its opinion XXII.2.b on the non-citation of harmonised standards of 21 September 2017, the REFIT Platform recognised the crucial role harmonised standards play in the good functioning of the internal market. It recommended that the current stock of non-cited harmonised standards is reduced and that a structural solution to prevent similar situations in the future is found. At the time, the Commission internal database listed 596 non-cited HENs submitted by the ESOs. In order to have an effective service for the implementation of the Regulation, the Commission paid attention to resolve the identified problems of the past, promoted an active involvement of specific services, so that, as of December 2021, the backlog of non-assessed and processed HENs submitted by the ESOs for citation in the OJEU has been reduced to only 2 standards from 2018 and 5 from 2019, which are currently pending a Commission decision.

Further to this opinion, the Commission in collaboration with the ESOs elaborated an Action Plan aiming at improving the efficiency of the standardisation system, reducing stocks of non-cited harmonised standards and improving practices in the publication of references to standards in the Official Journal of the EU.

As of 2021, the Commission has also set up a Task Force with the ESOs to improve the methodology for establishing standardisation priorities and for ensuring a timely delivery and citation of harmonised standards.