The European Commission plans to restructure the European standardization system. One reason for this is to address the fact that certain sectors of the economy are increasingly abandoning traditional, consensus-oriented standards committees in favour of other fora for development of the specifications that they need. This particularly applies to areas such as information and communications technology (ICT) and security.

The Internal Market Package adopted in 2008 contains not only Regulation 765/2008/EC on accreditation and market surveillance, but also Decision 768/2008/EC. This decision sets out the agreed provisions governing how directives are to be formulated in the future in order for the Single Market to be regulated more uniformly and effectively. In the course of implementation of the New Legislative Framework, the European Commission presented proposals for the alignment of ten directives.

Besides pure product standardization, standardization of services is becoming increasingly important, and is therefore also a highly topical issue for occupational safety and health. Above all, it is important that the service standards do not conflict with statutory OSH provisions. Standards are not a suitable instrument for regulating the safety and health of the persons delivering the service.

Accidents, in some cases severe, have occurred in the past during work with large forestry machinery. This has prompted KAN to commission a study into whether, and if so, to what extent, certain essential requirements of the 2006/42/EC Machinery Directive are supported by the standards governing forestry machinery. The study revealed a need for various aspects of the existing standards to be revised and improved.

Originating in the UK and now a board-approved project of UEPG, the European Aggregates Association, ‘Safer by Design’ comprises voluntary guidance addressing the design vacuum that exists between the manufacturers and users of mobile plant used in quarry extraction and processing. Complementing national, European and international standards, the core safety requirements identify and demonstrate the real ‘state of the art’ that should be reflected by the CE mark.

It's an appealing concept: any worker wearing personal protective equipment is automatically scanned in a non-contact manner at the point at which they access a workplace. The personal protective equipment is checked for its suitability, serviceable condition, and the mutual compatibility of the individual items of PPE. This should enable the accident rates, days of sick leave and cases of occupational disease to be reduced to their lowest ever levels.