In an own-initiative report adopted on Tuesday 28 March (38 votes in favour, one abstention), MEPs on the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) broadly welcomed the Commission’s standardisation strategy (see EUROPE 12882/3).
They also made a series of recommendations in the text for further strengthening the Internal Market. MEPs say that standardisation bodies should, for example, harmonise their standards as much as possible to reduce fragmentation in the Single Market. This is necessary for businesses, especially SMEs, they say.
In a compromise amendment, MEPs suggest that the Commission should establish, in consultation with the standardisation bodies, key performance indicators (KPIs) and guidelines on standardisation and its aspects. This is true, “in particular for standards linked to the objectives of the European Green Deal and of the Europe Digital Decade”.
Updating existing standards is also preferable to developing new ones, according to the Parliament, which considers that this can facilitate understanding and implementation.
In several places in the text, MEPs insist on the active participation of SMEs and other societal actors in international standardisation processes. For them, this is currently a major obstacle. “The Commission should cooperate with Member States in order to increase financial support and ensure that funding programmes are available that can provide substantial, long-term and stable financial support for the involvement of various stakeholders, including SMEs and consumers organisations”, they write in the own-initiative report.
They also recommend that the Commission carry out an inventory of civil society organisations that have an interest in contributing to standardisation work at European level.
See the own-initiative report: https://aeur.eu/f/637
See the compromise amendments: https://aeur.eu/f/638 (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)