NEWS
In 2023, the European Single Market celebrates its 30th anniversary. Since its creation in 1993, the Single Market has established itself as one of the EU’s greatest and most brilliant achievements: by facilitating trade across borders, reducing red tape, and ensuring the same levels of safety and quality, it has helped make everyday life easier for people and businesses, fuelling jobs and growth across the EU.
On 7 February, the European Standards Organizations (ESOs), CEN, CENELEC and ETSI, joined forces with ENISA, the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity, to organise their 7th annual conference. The hybrid conference took place at the Brussels Renaissance Hotel and focused on “European Standardization in support of the EU cybersecurity legislation”.
ANEC was delighted to provide several suggestions for improving the Draft Report on a Standardization Strategy for the Single Market (2022/2058(INI)) from the European Parliament Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection, presented by the Rapporteur MEP Adam Bielan.
The chemical sector is a pillar of the EU economy. According to the European Commission, it accounts for 7,5% of the EU manufacturing turnover, provides 1,2 million direct highly skilled jobs, and its sales amount to €565 billion (2018). As recently stated by Kerstin Jorna, Director General at DG GROW, the chemical industry is at "the beginning of everything", meaning that it is key to many other sectors for manufacturing their products.
For the last six years there has been a recurring debate in Europe on the trace chemicals found in absorbent hygiene products (AHPs). This debate was triggered by articles on this topic published in consumer magazines which raised questions on the safety of AHPs, and led to a so-called restriction proposal for the European Chemical Agency (ECHA) to restrict the use of chemicals in absorbent hygiene products. The process concluded in 2022, and while it found that the risks could not be demonstrated, it did conclude that there is a strong need for a harmonized analytical method that delivers robust and accurate test results.
On 1 February, Austrian Standards (ASI) organised a roundtable on the topic of photovoltaics. The event saw the participation of more than 50 people, from organizations such as OVE (Austrian Association for Electrical Engineering), the City of Vienna, Flughafen Wien AG and Wiener Stadthalle. During the discussion, participants shared their visions for the future, together with best practices from the still young operation of large-scale photovoltaic plants.
In an important recent development for the organization, UNI (the Italian Standardization Association) has distributed its new job system to the staff. The job system is a document that, for each role, details its content, analyzes the areas of responsibility, and formalises the missions, the main activities, knowledge and skills necessary through accurate job descriptions.
The first meeting of the High-Level Forum on European Standardization took place on 20 January 2023. Speaking on behalf of ETUC, the European Trade Union Confederation, Vice-President Oliver Roethig made the case for strengthening the involvement of unions in standard setting.
In 2022, the Slovak Office of Standards, Metrology and Testing (UNMS SR), together with the Czech Office for Standards, Metrology and Testing (ÚNMZ) and the Czech Standardization Agency (ČAS), commemorated the 100th anniversary of Czechoslovak standardization.
The new issue of the CEN-CENELEC newsletter 'On The Spot' is out now!