In its Communication on “Europe 2020: a strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth” the European Commission underlines that a strong, deep and extended Single Market is vital for growth and job creation. To answer the challenges set to achieve the Europe 2020 goals, a Single Market with well functioning open markets and empowered consumers is essential.

With the same view, CEN and CENELEC believe that standardization has a major role to play in assisting to reach a well functioning Single Market. In the past European standardization has already contributed in essential ways to remove technical barriers for businesses, to promote the spread of new technologies and to foster innovation.

CEN and CENELEC will continue supporting the consolidation of the European single market as detailed through the 50 proposals of the Single Market Act. Our standards are adopted identically by the 31 member countries of CEN and CENELEC, withdrawing national conflicting standards and therefore ensuring one standard for Europe.
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Looking at the title of today’s forum, one wonders if standardizing the single market is something of an oxymoron? While on one hand the standardization process will enable greater interoperability and reduce barriers to trade, on the other, markets are ever evolving beasts and, as fast as we try to make standards, new technologies and new services will continue to evolve, making the old standards obsolete.
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Within the context of Standardising the single market, we have twelve projects for the 2012 Single Market” – one of which is to Strengthen Standardisation.

The overall goals can be summarised as:

1) Free movement of Goods: Product interoperability, safety, quality

2) Services: inclusive services, ensuring growth

3) Standards – accessible, inclusion of SMEs

But behind these overarching goals, there are deeper issues.
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Let us focus on the issue within the topic “Twelve projects for the 2012 Single Market” of European services standards as distinct from the impact of the effectiveness, efficiency and inclusiveness of the European standards system on that question.

While of course to separate these issues removes the very interesting political and philosophical debate whether it is wise or not to revise the European standardisation system to extend it to services based upon the performance of the European standards system to deliver relevant services standards to the market. My rationale is that the best predictor of future performance is past performance. Those who believe that the European standards model largely oriented to products has performed well in the past will see benefits to its extension to services in the future. And those who believe other standards models have better served markets in the past will reach negative conclusions.
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Europe is committed to the 20-20-20 targets to reduce carbon emissions and to secure energy supply. Energy efficiency and renewable energy are seen as key to reach this goal. Both measures call for changes in our energy supply system leading to smart grids as key enablers for the required innovation. To promote this transformation the European Commission has taken a number of actions including a mandate on standardization.

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“A Tale of Two Tragedies – A plea for open standards” by Maurits Dolmans – published recently in the “International Free and Open Source Software Law Review” (www.ifosslr.org/ifosslr) – contrasts and compares the benefits of royalty-free licensing to that of FRAND in the context of the European ICT sector and examines a number of proposed criteria for defining an Open Standard.
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In October, Talkstandards.com hosted an open forum focused towards issues related to interoperability within European standardization and framed against the backdrop of the current EU activities. In addition to a series of expert keynote contributions (summarized below – please follow the links to access the articles in full) two exclusive interviews were conducted. The event can be found her: www.talkstandards.com/reforming-eu-standardization.

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Address the “holes” in existing standardization:

1. Help define the basic terms.
Without clear definitions, practice will be slipshod.
• What is a standard? It is not practical to transfer anything without a reference. Such ubiquity strongly suggests a “physical” law and mathematical form.
• What is an open standard? Most current descriptions are very biased.
• What is an open standardization process? Is it no IPR? Is RAND sufficient? Free standards documents? Fair representation of all stakeholders? World wide agreement?
“Open standards” is like “democratic government,” it is easy to say but very hard to achieve. First define it. (This task is underway in the EU, but deserves much higher visibility.) Then work to make it more likely.

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On the 6th October 2010, the European Commission published a communication on the Innovation Union. In order to realise the Innovation Union, barriers to bring ideas to the market should be removed. Among various obstacles, it is pointed out that a “faster setting of interoperable standards” is needed. The EC announces for 2011 a “legislative proposal on standardisation, which will inter alia cover the ICT sector, in order to speed up and modernise standard-setting to enable interoperability and foster innovation in fast-moving global markets.” However, it remains rather unclear how this objective will be reached. The only concrete policy approach is the announced “programme to anticipate new standardisation needs and integration of standards into R&D projects in the research Framework Programme.”

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There is an ongoing debate in the European commission about the review of the European Standardisation System. As per the draft report on the future of European standardization, The European Commission is currently working on a “Standardisation Package”, which will include a legislative proposal aimed to revise the existing legal framework on European standardisation and an umbrella Communication which will set the standardisation policy for the next decade.

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