Access to standardisation
In its recent Communication "Towards an increased contribution of standardisation to innovation in Europe" (COM(2008) 133 final 
[214 KB] ), as well as in the Small Business Act for Europe [100 KB] , the European Commission invited the European Standards Organisations to facilitate the access to standardisation.
Stakeholders need to be able to participate in the standards development process in a facilitated way, and to have easy access to standards and draft standardisation documents.
During the last 15 months, a consultancy firm (EIM) has conducted a study on behalf of the Commission on "Access to standardisation". The objective of that study was to measure whether there is a gap between declared principles of transparency and openness that govern standardisation, and the perceptions of stakeholders. The study was also aiming at providing recommendations in areas where access to standardisation could be improved.
The conclusions and recommendations [1000 KB] of the study [774 KB] were presented to stakeholders on 27 April 2009.
The presentation of the findings is available here [178 KB] as well as the reactions of ANEC [81 KB] , BUSINESSEUROPE [178 KB] , ECOS [126 KB] and NORMAPME [21 KB] .
In parallel, the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) and the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardisation (CENELEC) are carrying out their own study on access for SMEs to standardisation. This study [52 KB] was also presented on 27 April 2009.
