Report from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council. Article 25 report to the European Parliament and the Council on the impact of the procedures established by Article 10 of Regulation (EU) No 1025/2012 on European standardisation on the timeframe for issuing standardisation requests

Since the 1980’s the European standardisation organisations (ESOs) have played an important and widely recognised role in harmonising national standards in EU/EFTA countries and in supporting the creation of the Single Market. This recognition was first confirmed by Directive 83/189/EEC, then by the General Guidelines for Co-operation between the Commission and the ESOs, signed in 1984 and revised in 2003.

The European Committee for Standardisation (CEN), the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardisation (CENELEC) and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) are the European standardisation organisations (ESOs) recognised by the Standardisation Regulation. They adopt, on a voluntary basis, European standards and European standardisation deliverables to define voluntary technical or quality specifications with which current or future products, production processes or services may comply.

The main feature of the European standardisation system is that the Commission may request the ESOs to draw up a European standard or a European standardisation deliverable for products or for services in order to support Union legislation and policies. The legal basis used to be Directive 98/34/EC and the co-operation agreement with the ESOs while, nowadays, it is the Standardisation Regulation. Around 20% of all European standards and European standardisation deliverables are the result of such Commission requests, while the remaining 80% are stemming directly from proposals by industry or other standardisation stakeholders.

Regulation (EU) No 1025/2012 on European standardisation (hereinafter the Standardisation Regulation) establishes revised rules with regard to the request of European standards and European standardisation deliverables for products and for services in support of Union legislation and policies. The main change is that the Committee on Standards is consulted, applying the examination procedure described in Article 5 of Regulation (EU) No 182/2011. The opinion of the Committee is binding and a standardisation request is subsequently adopted by the Commission as an Implementing Act (Commission Implementing Decision).

In its proposal for a Regulation on European standardisation (COM(2011)315) the Commission had proposed to maintain the informal status of standardisation requests as well as the consultation described in Directive 98/34/EC. The co-legislator however decided differently: when issuing standardisation requests, the Member States should maintain control of the Commission's implementing powers via the examination procedure of Regulation (EU) No 182/2011.

In order to address any concern about the impact of the new examination procedure on the time required to issue a request for standardisation, Article 25 of the Standardisation Regulation requires that the Commission evaluates it by 2 January 2015. This report responds to that requirement.

• Primary Source

EUR-Lex: COM(2015)198: Follow the progress of this report through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2015:198:FIN

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