Registrant : Organisation or self-employed individual
| Name/company name: |
European Environmental Citizens' Organisation for Standardisation |
| Acronym: |
ECOS
|
| Legal status: |
asbl - association sans but lucratif (Belgium)
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| Website address: |
http://www.ecostandard.org
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Sections
| Section: |
III - Non-governmental organisations |
| and more precisely: |
Non-governmental organisations, platforms and networks and similar |
Person with legal responsibility
| Surname, Name: |
Mrs
Laura Degallaix
|
| Position: |
Secretary General |
Permanent person in charge of EU relations
| Surname, Name: |
Mrs
Laura Degallaix
|
| Position: |
Secretary General |
Contact details:
| Contact details of organisation's head office: |
26 Rue d’Edimbourg Mundo-B
Brussels 1050
BELGIUM
|
| Telephone number: |
(+32) 28944668 |
| Fax number: |
(+) |
| Other contact information: |
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Goals / remit
| Goals / remit of the organisation: |
ECOS was created in 2001 to enhance the voice of the environment within the (European and international) standardisation system. Its objective is essentially of a non-profit-making nature. Its goal is to promote the protection of the environment while standards are developed in standardisation bodies established at international, European Union, European Free Trade Association and Member State level, including in accession countries, so that these bodies can actively contribute to a better environmental performance of the economy in the European Union. The standards concerned are those developed by European or national standardisation bodies as a result of legislation or delegation of powers by the European Commission (e.g. Commission Mandates under the New Legislative Framework for products) as well as the standards that are developed within those standardisation bodies without a mandate from public authorities. More specifically, the objective of ECOS is:
- to represent European and national environmental organisations at technical and decision-making level within the international and European standardisation process;
- to cooperate with the EU Commission and other stakeholders in the relevant standardisation bodies;
- to coordinate the environmental associations’ contribution to the enhancement of environmental aspects in the standardisation process at international, European and national levels;
- to promote and assess the integration of environmental aspects into standards with the purpose of reducing negative environmental impacts;
- to assess the quality of standardisation processes and discuss with European Union decision-makers on the basis of these assessments;
- to protect the interests of the environment in the work of the standardisation bodies;
- to contribute to the improvement of consumer choice by providing a wider array of environmentally sound products;
- to disseminate information about relevant standardisation processes among environmental organisations;
- to promote the active involvement of environmental organisations in standardisation matters at national level and between national, European and international levels;
- to promote the EU legal provisions that support the integration of environmental interests in a structural manner in the European Union standardisation process and policies.
ECOS is an associate member of CEN, the European Committee for Standardization and a co-operating partner of CENELEC, the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization. ECOS is also a “liaison organisation” to several technical bodies of ISO and IEC. Thanks to the memberships in CEN and CENELEC, ECOS has access to all their technical committees and sends experts to participate in standards development work. Furthermore, ECOS works on improving the framework for public interest stakeholders in standardisation. It is the only environmental organisation worldwide working to such a degree of detail and on such a wide number of issues on standardisation.
Since 2007 ECOS also represents the environmental movement in the implementation of the EU's Ecodesign (of Energy related Products) directive. This process launched in 2005 is progressively setting mandatory legislation on the main products sold on the market to enhance their ecological performance.
ENGOs are actively involved in monitoring this process and ensuring it delivers with the highest possible level of ambition. We are reviewing the technical studies and providing comments and suggestions on each product covered by the European Institutions. ECOS has a seat in the consultation forum (as well as three other ENGOs, with which ECOS cooperates closely). It monitors the implementation process from the technical stage to the decision-making in “comitology” giving its input to Commission, MS and EP. As in standardisation ECOS is the European umbrella organisation coordinating and enhancing the input of ENGOs into the ecodesign-process.
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The organisation's fields of interests are:
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Number of persons engaged in activities falling under the scope of the Transparency Register
| Number of persons: |
2.5
|
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Complementary information:
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Persons accredited for access to European Parliament premises
| First name
|
Surname
|
Start Date |
End Date |
|
Blanca
|
Morales Bailon
|
27/02/13
|
25/02/14
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Activities
Main EU initiatives covered the year before by activities falling under the scope of the Transparency Register:
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A) Areas
1. Standardisation
ECOS works with the European institutions on standardisation policy, on the integration of environmental aspects into standardisation, the treatment of public interest stakeholder representation in standardisation, EC standardisation mandates and on the legislative framework for European standardisation.
90% of its interest representation activities are directed towards the European Commission, mostly towards DG ENTR, but also to DG ENER and DG ENV. Sometimes it has contacts to Member States, rarely to the European Parliament (its political groups or individual MEPs).
This is different from summer 2010 until about end of 2012, because ECOS has been and will be following the co-decision procedure of the legislative review on European standradisation (including, in 2010, its run-up via an EP own-initiative report).
Very rarely ECOS gives input to the institutions on specific standardisation issues in sectoral policy directives.
2. Ecodesign
In the area of Ecodesign-implementation ECOS works closely with the Commission DGs running the Ecodesign-product studies (DG TREN, DG ENTR) as well as with Council and Parliament once the implementing measures proposed by the Commission get to the stage of consultation forum and final decision.
B) Staff involved (only for a percentage of their time)
Edouard Toulouse, Policy Officer
Stamatis Sivitos, Ecodesign Officer
Dania Cristofaro, Pollution Control Officer
Laura Degallaix, Secretary General
As an extension of its ecodesign work, ECOS used to coordinatie the related multi-NGO campaign "coolproducts for a cool planet", under which consultants were hired. This ended by the end of 2010. Since 2011 the EEB (see ECOS member organisations) has been coordinating this campaign.
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Fields of interest for e-mail alerts on consultations and roadmaps;
| Fields declared by the organisation: |
- Agriculture and Rural Development
- Climate Action
- Energy
- Enterprise
- Environment
- Internal Market
- Public Health
- Research and Technology
- Trade
- Transport
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Structure
| Total number of members that are natural persons: |
0 |
| Number of member organisations: |
30 |
| Member organisations (Number of members) : |
- European Environmental Bureau (0 members)
- Friends of the Earth Europe (0 members)
- Health & Environment Alliance (HEAL) (0 members)
- Healthcare Without Harm Europe (0 members)
- Transport and Environment (T&E) (0 members)
- WWF European Policy Office (0 members)
- Clean Air Action Group (0 members)
- Bellona (0 members)
- Bond Beter Leefmilieu Vlaanderen (0 members)
- Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland (BUND) (0 members)
- Bundesverband Bürgerinitiativen Umweltschutz (BBU) (0 members)
- Danmarks Naturfreningsforening (135,000 members)
- Deutscher Naturschutzring (0 members)
- France Nature Environnement (0 members)
- Friends of the Earth Latvia (0 members)
- Institute for Ecological Modernisation (0 members)
- Inter-Environnement Wallonie (0 members)
- Leefmilieu (130 members)
- Stichting Natuur en Milieu (6,800 members)
- Svenska Naturskyddsföreningen (0 members)
- Terra Cypria (0 members)
- Women in Europe for a Common Future France (100 members)
- Quercus (0 members)
- Waste Watch-Keep Britain Tidy (0 members)
- Umweltdachverband (0 members)
- Rreuse (0 members)
- DOOR, the Society for Sustainable Development Design (0 members)
- CNIID,Centre National d’Information Indépendante sur les Déchets (0 members)
- Oekozenter Lëtzebuerg, the Luxembourg Ecological Center (0 members)
- WWF Switzerland (0 members)
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| The organisation has members/is represented in the following country(countries): |
- AUSTRIA
- BELGIUM
- BULGARIA
- CYPRUS
- DENMARK
- FRANCE
- GERMANY
- HUNGARY
- LATVIA
- LUXEMBOURG
- NETHERLANDS
- PORTUGAL
- SWEDEN
- UNITED KINGDOM
- CROATIA
- NORWAY
- SWITZERLAND
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Complementary information:
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Networking
Information on (i) organisation's membership of any associations/federations/confederations or (ii) relationships to other bodies in formal or informal networks.
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1. ECOS is an associate member of CEN, the European Committee for Standardization (Identification number in the register: 14168793342-48) and of CENELEC, European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (Identification number in the register: 58258552517-56).
It is ECOS’ core mission to represent the environmental community within the European Standardisation Bodies. “Representation” in that sense has two aspects:
- Representing ENGOs in the technical bodies of CEN and CENELEC and contributing technical environmental expertise and positions.
- Representing ENGOs in the internal governance structure of CEN and CENELEC.
2. ECOS is a “liaison organisation” to several technical committees and sub-committees of ISO, the International Organization for Standardization and IEC, the International Electrotechnical Commission.
3. ECOS has signed a memorandum of understanding with ANEC, the European Association for the Co-ordination of Consumer Representation in Standardisation, Identification number in the register: 507800799-30.
4. ECOS is an umbrella organisation itself, founded to represent environmental NGOs (ENGOs) in technical processes such as standardisation. Therefore some of its member organisations are networks themselves, such as WWF-EPO, EEB, (also registered) etc.
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Financial data
| Financial year: |
01/2012
-
12/2012
|
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Total budget:
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465,456
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€
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of which public financing:
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273,876
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€
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- from European sources:
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- Procurement:
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93,712
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€
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- Grants:
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167,045
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€
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- from national sources:
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2,025
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€
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- from local/regional sources:
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0
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€
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- EFTA :
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11,094
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€
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from other sources: |
191,580
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€
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- donations:
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€
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- contributions from members:
|
7,700
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€
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- Foundations :
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179,034
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€
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- Miscellaneous :
|
4,846
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€
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Estimated costs to the organisation directly related to representing interests to EU institutions in that year:
|
350000
€ - 400000
€
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Other (financial) information provided by the organisation:
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ECOS is committed to transparency about EU interest representation. It believes that this register fails basic transparency standards and that it does not provide EU lobbying transparency. When registering, we have therefore chosen to give all relevant information that we consider necessary for lobbying transparency. A credible EU lobbying transparency register should include names of individual lobbyists and the issues that they try to influence, to provide precise and comparable financial information on lobbying, and have effective sanctions to ensure the accuracy and completeness of the information disclosed. In an effort to arrive at a more objective way of calculating lobbying expenditures, we follow guidelines developed by the Civil Society Contact Group and ALTER-EU that reflect the advice of professionals working on lobby transparency as well as relevant aspects of US lobby disclosure legislation. Our registration is therefore providing a more comprehensive calculation of our lobbying expenses, and a complete list of anyone who, in the name or on behalf of ECOS carries out activities with the objective of influencing the policy formulation and decision-making processes of the European institutions.
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