What is a standard?
It is a document
• voluntary in application
• established by all interested parties
• reflecting consensus
• approved by a recognized body
• meant for common and repeated
What is a standard?
It is a document
• voluntary in application
• established by all interested parties
• reflecting consensus
• approved by a recognized body
• meant for common and repeated
Who are the recognized bodies?
There are many standardization bodies in the world, some more global others more specific in terms of regional relevance and scope. The standardization system in the world most relevant to LEEA is the ISO/CEN system that has 3 levels:
• National standards developed by the national standardization bodies. As example, the national standardization body in the UK is BSI (British Standards Institution), which develops national standards with the prefix BS (British Standard)
• European standards with the prefix EN (European Norm) developed by CEN (European Committee for Standardization). CEN is composed by 34 member standardization bodies that commit to implement all EN’s and to withdraw all conflicting national standards. As example, an BS EN is the British implementation of the EN. In France, the same standard will be NF (Norme Française) EN. These two versions will technically exactly the same
only with differences in the language they are written in and the potential addition of national annexes (only informative).
The 34 CEN members are:
o all member states of the European Union
o three of the EFTA members: Iceland, Norway, Switzerland
o other states: United Kingdom, North Macedonia, Turkey, Serbia
• International standards with the prefix ISO developed by ISO (International Organization for Standardization. ISO is composed by 172 national standardization bodies, which do not have the obligation to adopt them as national standards. ISO and CEN signed the Vienna Agreement to develop standards together, when possible. The result of that collaborative process is a standards with the prefix EN ISO.
The standards development process
The standards development processes of the several standardization bodies are different but usually they all the participation of the interested stakeholders either directly or through the national standardization bodies, which previous discuss and decide on a national position. The latter is the case of in CEN and ISO. The Technical Committees (TC) are composed by delegates that represent the national position but Working Groups (WG) are composed by experts who participate in their personal technical capacity. Technical Committees are decision bodies were votes are cast, in the Working Groups consensus has to be achieved.
CEN and ISO have equivalent standards development processes with the following phases:
• New work item (NWI) proposal – A formal proposal is presented to the Technical Committee by approval by delegates. If approved, the work starts. In some cases, there is work being done before under a preliminary work item
• Building expert consensus - Experts work in the first draft in a Working Group or SubCommittee (SC)
• CD (Committee Draft) FWD / (First Working Draft) – This first draft is sent to the Technical Committee for information
• Enquiry – DIS (Draft Internation Standard) / prEN – The draft is made publicly available to all national stakeholders for commenting
• Comment resolution - in a Working Group (WG) Sub-Committee (SC) – Experts discuss and resolve by consensus the comments received
• Formal Vote (FV) – FDIS / FprEN – The delegate in the TC vote the final version of the document. Only editorial changes are allowed after this point
• Publication – CEN and standardization bodies work on the editing and translation of document before its publication
The relationship of European standards with European legislation
In Europe (and still in the Great Britain), some European standards are directly related to specific pieces of legislation. This means that, by following a specific clause of the standard, there is presumption of conformity to a specific clause in the relevant piece of legislation. This correspondence between the standard and the legislation is presented in the informed Annex ZA that can be found at the end of the standard. These special standards are called “harmonized standards” in Europe and “designated standards” in Great Britain.
