Closing plenary on the Joint initiative on Standardisation
ECOS Director Laura Degallaix presented ECOS’ preliminary views on the Joint Initiative on Standardisation (JIS) at the closing plenary in Brussels on 29 April 2016. Organised by the European Commission, the plenary brought the European standardisation community and other interested stakeholders together to discuss the latest draft of the Joint Initiative. Since the first plenary on 23 November 2015, ECOS has partaken in all nine consecutive meetings of the Editorial Committee of the Initiative.
The Joint Initiative on Standardisation sets a shared vision for European standardisation, taking steps to modernise the European Standardisation System, and striving for the timely delivery of standards. In her impulse statement, Laura Degallaix welcomed that the vision statement of the Joint Initiative acknowledges the importance of promoting transparency and inclusiveness in the standardisation system and the importance of ensuring market relevant standards, which also reflect the needs of society. She, however, raised concerns about the overly idealistic portrayal of the system painted by the Joint Initiative. While standards can contribute towards enhancing societal welfare and environmental protection, they have their limitations. Past experience has shown that the private, industry-dominated nature of the system makes it inappropriate for standards to address environmental and societal challenges as there is an absence of clear and ambitious overarching binding requirements. This was recently proved after unrealistic and sometimes swindled test methods were developed to measure the energy consumption of household products in the Ecodesign policy area, resulting in misleading consumers and squandered energy-savings. She reminded of the necessity for clear and ambitious legal requirements in environmental policies and legislation, and to only delegate the task of developing purely technical details to standardisers in support of their implementation.
Mrs Degallaix highlighted that transparency can only be ensured through the mutual trust between actors/stakeholders involved and confidence in the system. Today, transparency only exists at the planning stage of standardisation work and disappears throughout the standard development process, and at the final stage. For example, currently, harmonised standards, which have been developed thanks to public funding following a request from the European Commission request are not made publicly available. ECOS, therefore, welcomes Action 1 which proposes the undertaking of an evaluation study of the economic and societal impacts of standards, as well as of the different models of financing standardisation. Unfortunately, she saw the creation of a roundtable allowing a continuous, bilateral, and informal dialogue between the European Commission and industry on standardisation developments (Action 6) as a threat to transparency and confidence in the system.
In order to have fruitful collaborations, she stressed the importance of everyone agreeing on a set of common objectives. The general lack of ambition or clarity in the description of the actions and the underpinning problems they are meant to solve makes it difficult to engage blindly in the implementation of the JIES. ECOS calls for the Steering Committee to ensure the definition of clear goals and objectives and that the actions build upon past recommendations from the EXPRESS Report and the Independent Review. There should be milestones and targets with continuous evaluations and reviews of the progress.
On the subject of inclusiveness, she argued that this principle implies the effective participation of all stakeholders, going beyond simple representation. Effective participation of societal stakeholders must be a priority, and can only be ensured if underrepresented stakeholders are granted appropriate rights in the system allowing their voices to be heard, such as a right to express a formal opinion at the final voting stage. ECOS urges for Actions 9 and 10 of the Joint Initiative to primarily focus on supporting and actively facilitating the participation of societal stakeholders at European and national level. In view of the barriers encountered by environmental NGOs in international standardisation, Action 15 should also be extended to societal stakeholders.
To conclude, Laura Degallaix stressed the importance of avoiding that the JIS becomes smoke and mirrors. Bearing in mind that the standardisation system is a private system whose members also have their own agendas, it is imperative for the JIS to stay in touch with reality, to incorporate itself into the system’s own dynamics, and address existing challenges the system faces, such as the growing importance of international standardisation and the TTIP.
ECOS’ member organisations will decide to engage in the implementation of the Joint Initiative on Standardisation ahead of the 13th of June signature ceremony under the Dutch Presidency.
