Standardisation in Defence

Standardising defence equipment across Europe is important for opening up and intergrating national markets.

In order to support the common use of standards in defence procurement, the Commission developed the European Handbook on Defence Procurement which gives defence procurement managers state-of-the-art standards references and shows how best to specify them in defence contracts.

The overall objective is to:

reduce divergence in standards,
better-align national procurement practices, and
better support cooperation and interoperability.

Funded by the Commission and coordinated by the European Committee for Standardisation, the Handbook complements similar work by the NATO Standardisation Agency and the European Defence Agency (EDA).

The handbook has now been completed and has been donated to the EDA which has access to considerable expertise in defence standards to maintain it and further develop. The Handbook has now been integrated into the Agency's infrastructure and has been renamed as EDSTAR. The Commission's involvement is ensured through membership of its Maintenance Committee.

The EDA also promotes defence standardisation through its EDSIS portal, where participating countries can advertise materiel standards due to be developed or substantially modified, so other countries and industries can express an interest in joining these projects.