Brussels, 17/12/2001 (Agence Europe) - The European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) has decided to follow the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) in publishing electronic standards online free of charge from January 2002. This decision is part of the "e-Europe Standards Action Plan" that aims to help entrepreneurs by ensuring that new technology standards are sufficiently well-defined to make sure that information and communication technology systems are interoperable. The standardisation work is being sponsored by the Commission and carried out by European standards organisations CEN, CENELEC and ETSI. More than 3000 experts are actively involved in the work and the e-Europe standards are being defined in workshops whose agreements will be made available for free downloading from the CEN website. For more information: http: //http://www.cenorm.be.