European standardization policy

Contact: Corado Mattiuzzo (mattiuzzo@kan.de)

In Europe, standardization policy is the responsibility of the European Commission, the EU member states and the European standards organizations CEN, CENELEC and ETSI along with their national members. The cooperation between these parties is based on the "General guidelines for the cooperation between CEN, CENELEC and ETSI and the European Commission and the European Free Trade Association". In the Senior Officials Group for Standardization and Conformity Assessment (SOGS), the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Enterprise and Industry (DG ENTR) consults with representatives of the member states on key standardization issues, often resulting in communications being issued by the Commission and the Council.

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The role of standardization in relation to safety and health of workers at work – the German Consensus Statement

Contact: Angela Janowitz (janowitz@kan.de)

The"German Consensus Statement on Standardization in the Field of Directives based on Article 118a of the EC Treaty" was drawn up to reiterate the fact that the European legal system does not provide for complete harmonization of this area of social policy. At the European level, both standardization experts and the EC Treaty and institutions continue to support the view that standards can only ever be applied to a very limited extent in the field of social policy.Nonetheless, national, European and international standards repeatedly include requirements concerning safety and health of workers at work. This must be prevented or, if prevention is not possible, efforts must be made to create a clear distinction between product requirements and workplace requirements. At the same time, however, the growth of standardization activity at an international level presents the OSH community with the task of further developing its strategy for standardization and the occupational safety and health of workers at work. As a first step, KAN described in KANBrief 2/09 the current limits of and scope for standardization in this field.

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International harmonization

Contact: Corado Mattiuzzo (mattiuzzo@kan.de)

Increasingly, technical standards are being drawn up at the international level. This development is being bolstered by international trade agreements, with the result that both European and German standards are increasingly based on the outcomes of international standardization activities. This is also true of standards related to occupational health and safety. It is therefore becoming ever more important that the OH&S sphere exerts an effective influence, as early as possible, on ISO's standardization work.  

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