Brussels, 15/06/2006 (Agence Europe) - The Commission has launched a six week public consultation on how to improve the “new approach” to the legislative technique, which goes back twenty years to the area of harmonisation of products since the famous “Cassis d Dijon” ruling by the European Court of Justice. The new approach introduces a system based on the delegation by the European legislator of activities that can by carried out by market actors. This system is counterbalanced by an assessment mechanism of the results obtained by way of this policy. The Commission has competency for granting a mandate to three European standardisation bodies (CEN/CENELEC, IENT) for defining technical specifications for products that are marketed according to Community harmonisation requirements. An inspection system checks whether products comply with these technical specifications by way of tests, certification and by the companies themselves.
The objective in the review of the “new approach” is to simplify legislation on product harmonisation and make it more coherent. It will affect the following: compliance assessment procedures (how a manufacturer demonstrates how his products comply with legal requirements); the quality of the work carried out by the compliance assessment bodies, for example through certification bodies, trial laboratories) and the strengthening of their role in certification; “EC branding” through which a manufacturer declares that this product complies with applied standards; the strengthening and coordination of market monitoring systems, notably measures to take when a product does not conform to standards.
According to the Commission consultation, the “new approach” is considered as being “very dependent on the effectiveness of the European standards organisations”. It also suffers from an image that it closely tied to the industrial sector, which makes it less attractive for playing a role in the protection of the environment, consumers and workers, whereas the future for standardisation is in fact going to be based in the services sector. Some mechanisms for inspection do not operate in a way that is totally transparent. An on-line questionnaire is available at the following site: (http: //ec.europa.eu/yourvoice/ipm/forms/ dispatch?form=NAGA&lang=en).