Revision of the CEN/CENELEC Guide on Workshop Agreements (CWAs)

A CWA is a deliverable developed and agreed by a temporary working group called CEN and/or CENELEC Workshop. This group, comprising individuals and organizations, develops a document that does not necessarily reflect the opinion of all stakeholders. In addition, no obligation exists for a consensus to be reached, nor must the public necessarily be involved. This can be beneficial to satisfy the needs presented by technological developments in fast-moving industries such as the IT sector, and the need for swift standardization of research results. 

Safety and health issues must not be addressed by such workshops, but only by fully-fledged standards committees such as Technical Committees (TCs) or Project Committees (PCs). This important rule previously only applied to CENELEC. KAN had therefore campaigned for years for it to also be applied to CWAs developed by CEN. This and the ban on governing aspects that are the subject of European legal acts have now been implemented in the new version of Guide 29, which KAN expressly welcomes.

Further information:
Guide 29 “A rapid way to standardization” (pdf, not eAccessible) and CEN-CENELEC website