BFPA to represent BSI and the UK Standards Community on a European CEN-CENELEC Industry Advisory Group

30 Jan 2019

Against the distraction of the political rhetoric and parliamentary in-fighting one could be forgiven for being distracted from the all-important involvement of the UK; or more specifically; BSI and its partner UK Trade Associations, in setting the European Standards against which all trade with the EU will be regulated. Whatever the outcome of Brexit!

The good news is that on the 23rd of November and again on the 15th of January this year, the BSI reassured the UK Standards community, that its place on the CEN-CENELEC technical committees would be secure irrespective of the outcome of BREXIT or indeed whether or not, the UK is part of the EU going forwards. This is good news to the extent that we will retain our voice in the standards setting process against which all UK manufacturers and suppliers to the EU will have to comply. It does however, raise potential issues around future divergence of UK and EU regulation and the BFPA, in looking after the best interest of its members, will continue to lobby hard for maintaining regulatory harmonisation with the EU after the end of March 2019. This is not a political point but a simple case of common sense.

CENELEC is a European regional standards organization that together with its sister organizations CEN, the European Committee for Standardization, and ETSI, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, compose the so-called and known European Standards Organizations (ESOs) that are officially recognised by the European Commission and act as a European platform through which European Standards are developed.

 

In re-enforcing our continued involvement with the CEN-CENELEC Committee work, I am pleased to inform members that the BFPA has been nominated through its CEO, to represent the BSI and UK manufacturers on a new CEN-CENELEC Industry Advisory Group; the IAG.

The mission of this group is broadly defined in the opening paragraph of the draft terms of reference.

“The purpose of the [CEN] Industry Advisory Forum (IAF) is to allow industry representatives, and CEN and CENELEC to:

  • have an open exchange on current standardization issues;
  • identify and inform on standardization priority topics for the industry;
  • express suggestions, expectations and concerns to identify common solutions;

in view of providing advice to the CEN and CENELEC governance on standardization priorities and how to address them, and proposing medium- and long-term market-driven standardization objectives for CEN and CENELEC to undertake to reach the Ambitions 2020 and beyond.”

As the UK CEN member, BSI has submitted a candidate to sit on the European Forum. (Chris Buxton from BFPA)

In order to ensure that the ‘UK voice’ on this forum was representative of wider UK opinion, BSI felt that a UK mirror Group; the UK IAF, should be established. This UK forum provides both a platform for capturing issues of UK concern whilst providing an additional conduit for two-way communication between both standards communities on issues of strategic importance. It would also provide the UK representative with an opportunity to better prepare for each CEN meeting. The first meeting of the UK forum took place on the 18th of January in anticipation of the CEN IAF meeting on the 22nd of January.   This UK Mirror Group is also chaired by BFPA whilst BSI staff provide secretarial services.

Designed, (as described in the ToR), to function at a strategic level, the EU IAG has identified six key focus areas around which a standards development strategy will be developed. They are:-

  • Digital Transformation
  • Internationalisation of Standards and harmonisation with IEC and/or ISO standards
  • Construction Products Regulations (CPR)
  • The New Legislative Framework
  • The standards development process
  • Competition from independent Standards Development Organisations (SDO’s)

The EU IAG plans to meet in Brussels three times a year so BFPA and BSI are taking steps to ensure that the UK Mirror Group meets with similar frequency but sufficiently out of phase with the EU meeting as to facilitate the collation of opinion and data prior to contributing in Europe.

This is important work for the UK and re-enforces BFPA’s commitment to the UK’s role in setting both domestic and international technical standards.

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