European integration through standardization: How judicial review is breaking down the club house of private standardization bodies

Publishers Abstract:
Academics are usually surprised by the rich variety of cases that are brought to court demonstrating the imagination of practising lawyers to twist the law in order to make it fit their arguments. Sometimes, though, it works the other way round. The case that sparked this article came up in the Netherlands after many years of debate over whether private standards should become available free of charge as soon as the legislature uses them in order to specify certain public rights or obligations.

As academics working in the field, the authors were long wondering why the public nature and cost-free accessibility of private standards, which form part of the law-making process have not been seriously challenged in courts before. One would have expected this since the practice of referring to technical standards has grown tremendously since the introduction of the so-called New Approach at the EU level in the early 1980s.