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[To Eurosmart members only]
Smooth sailing for the standardisation file
On 12 July, MEPs from the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) adopted the standardisation file. Overall, the legislative process goes very fast. Last May, Member States already adopted the text. They were very satisfied with the Commission’s proposal and decided to adopt it as such. Therefore, negotiations between the European Parliament and the Council can start very soon.
Background
Last February, the European Commission proposed revising Standardisation Regulation 1025/2012 to ensure that only national standardisation bodies have decision-making power when it comes to preparing and adopting standards on request from the Commission. The Commission would only request standards and standardisation deliverables from European Standardisation Organisations (ESOs) that comply with this rule.
Version adopted by the MEPs
The MEPs brought some changes to the Commission’s proposal. They mainly modified the recitals, which are not legally binding but can help interpret the text.
In these recitals, the MEPs stress the importance of standards not only for the internal market but also for consumer protection and the environment. They significantly modified the Commission’s recital 4, which stated that “unrestricted participation of any stakeholder” in internal the decision-making of ESOs may not take into account the EU’s “interests”, that they changed to “unrestricted access to internal decision-making concerning work programmes or priorities” may not take into account “policy objectives”.
However, MEPs also added that “the participation of national standardisation organisations of third countries should not amount to impeding the adoption of any decision concerning European standards and European deliverables supported by the majority of national standardisation bodies from Member States of the Union”.
When it comes to the modification of Article 1 (legally binding), MEPs added that the decisions should be taken “-without prejudice to other advisory opinions- by national representatives, namely by representatives of the national standardisation bodies […]”. They deleted the possibility for national standardisation bodies to have an exclusive say on decisions on the “execution” of standardisation requests. They would still have exclusive decision-making power on:
-acceptance and refusal of standardisation requests.
-decisions on the acceptance of new work items that are needed for the fulfilment of the standardisation request
-decisions on the adoption, revision and withdrawal of European standards or European standardisation deliverables
Next steps
The plenary session of the European Parliament needs to adopt the text as well
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