On 16 May 2024, CEN and CENELEC received the visit of a delegation from SCC (Standards Council of Canada), headed by Mrs Chantal Guay, SCC’s Chief Executive Officer.
The objective of this meeting was to identify potential future new areas of cooperation (including Sustainability, Cybersecurity, and Research and Innovation) and to provide input into the upcoming review of the Cooperation Agreement between CEN, CENELEC and SCC.
Over the past years, the three Partners have been intensifying their relations to build a stronger partnership. Since 2020, the three standardization organizations contribute to the work of the EU-Canada Regulatory Cooperation Forum (RCF), established in 2019 under the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). The main topics for discussion between CEN, CENELEC and SCC under the RCF are Circular Economy, Hydrogen Technologies, and AI and Data.
To complement these activities, SCC is also a Companion Standardization Body (CSB) of CEN since August 2023. This additional cooperation framework aims to offer a set of services to SCC, including:
- full access to CEN standards, for adoption or for review by SCC-accredited Standards Development Organizations;
- opportunities for SCC to send Canadian experts to contribute to the work of CEN Technical Committees. Since December 2023, SCC has observership in CEN/CLC/JTC 21 on Artificial Intelligence.
