About

to inform European policy makers about industry’s interests and priorities
for using harmonised standards in the framework of Regulation EU 1025/2012

Regulation EU 1025/2012 on European standardisation of 14 November 2012 has been adopted as the new framework for regulating certain aspects of the work of the three European standardisation organisations (ESOs) – CEN, CENELEC and ETSI. This European Regulation grants the legal basis for the European Commission to request ESOs to develop standards which have the potential to support EU legislation and policies, provided that they are used by interested stakeholders.

Regulation 1025/2012 is managed by a Commission/Member States committee called the “Committee on Standards” (CoS).

This Committee foresees that certain stakeholders are invited to participate in the work of the CoS, including SBS (represent SMEs), ANEC (to represent consumers), ECOS (to represent environmental stakeholders), ETUC (to represent the trade unions) as well as the three above-mentioned European standards organisations.

Although industry supports 95% of standards’ development costs and is the main user of standards, it is not represented in the CoS.

The purpose of setting up INGRESS is therefore to:

• Promote the common interests of industry – based in the EU – in those areas of standardisation policy falling under Regulation 1025/2012.
• Ensure that the principle driver of European standardisation should be market relevance.

Why participate in a multi-industry stakeholder platform on European standardisation?

• Because European standardisation policy matters

The European Commission’s standardisation requests to CEN, CENELEC or ETSI could have a positive or negative impact on European companies. Industrial policy, including standardisation policy directly affects the business interests of many companies.

INGRESS aims to keep you informed of EU standardisation policy issues, draft EC requests and plans that may affect the performance of European Standards Organisations.

• Because the European Commission needs to hear industry’s voice clearly

European standardisation organisations (ESOs) are facilitating the process of developing European standards, whether mandated or not, in an open, transparent and neutral manner for all interested stakeholders. While industry experts contribute their expertise, free of charge, to the development of European standards, their concerns and expectations cannot be voiced to European policy makers (incl. in the CoS) by any of the ESOs, as doing so risks jeopardising their neutrality.

INGRESS, as a European multi-stakeholder platform aims to support your organisation’s positions on standardisation policy issues at European level.

• Because we believe market relevance should be the driver behind standardisation

As European standards are in most cases voluntarily used by companies to support their business needs, it is important to ensure that the European Commission’s standardisation requests are attractive to industry experts who participate in the standards’ development process thereby, providing the best chance to achieve a broad uptakeof harmonised standards by companies.

INGRESS aims to advocate the need for standards to be first and foremost market relevant.