KAN adopts a position on the instrument of common specifications

For the event that European standards organizations fail to submit harmonized standards in response to existing standardization mandates, or submit standards that are inadequate, the European Commission has created a fallback solution in the form of “common specifications”. KAN has published a position paper on this instrument.

Common specifications are EU implementing acts. Their purpose is to ensure that where harmonized standards are inadequate or do not exist at all, the public interest, such as protection of safety and health, is nevertheless satisfied. Common specifications are technical specifications with the function of harmonizing product requirements, in the same way as standards.

Owing to the role played by harmonized standards in the Single Market, however, common specifications should serve only as a fallback solution. The Commission would have recourse to them where it had already mandated the European standards organizations with developing a specific harmonized standard but either the mandate had not been accepted, the requested standard had not been developed by a set deadline, or the standard delivered had failed to satisfy the mandate. Furthermore, common specifications must not be used where a harmonized standard satisfying the requirements of the standardization mandate already exists.

As yet, the essential criteria for the adoption of common specifications and the provisions for their development are to be found only in individual legal acts specific to certain sectors; examples of these are the Machinery Regulation and the Artificial Intelligence Act. A horizontal legal framework governing this instrument is not in place. The individual legal acts also contain no indication of how exactly the European Commission should develop the – technically challenging – common specifications, and how it should ensure availability of the expertise required for this purpose.

KAN’s position

As the representative of German occupational safety and health interests in standardization, KAN therefore takes the following position:

• One cornerstone of standardization activity are rules governing the composition of the committees responsible for it, means for the stakeholders to participate in it, and procedures by which the working documents are approved for publication. In KAN’s view, clear and legally binding criteria should also be applied and a transparent procedure followed for the development and adoption of common specifications.
• To prevent fragmentation and incoherence of the body of standards and regulations, the requirements and procedure for development, adoption and publication of common specifications must be governed in a single horizontal legal framework that is binding for all Single Market regulations.
• The instrument of common specifications should be used only in exceptional cases.
• Standards are developed on the basis of consensus, and ideally by the parties who will actually use them. This engenders confidence in the final product. In addition, all societal stakeholders, including those representing occupational safety and health interests, are at liberty in principle to participate in drafting of the standards. The procedure for implementing acts also provides for a certain degree of stakeholder involvement; however, since common specifications govern technically demanding subject-matter, suitable experts and all stakeholders, including societal interest groups, should be involved at an early stage and their expertise taken into account.

The Commission stated in the 2022 EU Strategy on Standardisation (p. 5) that it was working towards a horizontal approach. This approach is to define criteria and procedures for when, and under what conditions, the Commission may be authorized to issue common specifications. It remains to be seen when and how the European Commission will assume this task.

Ronja Heydecke
heydecke@kan.de

Katharina Schulte
schulte@kan.de