Strengthening the Internal Market: Orgalim virtual roundtable highlights burdens on European standardisation

8 June 2020

On 2 June, Orgalim hosted a virtual roundtable to discuss the serious issues that industry continues to face due to the bureaucracy and delays existing within the current EU governance for harmonised standards.

Chaired by Philippe Portalier, Orgalim's Director of Better Regulation, Compliance and Standards, the event brought together leading voices from industry who shared their insights on the administrative hurdles businesses are facing due to the application issues of current European standardisation regulation. View the recording here.

Download the presentations

Harmonised standards play a critical role, facilitating the free circulation of products within the Single Market. "Companies invest in standards because they help them deliver superior value to customers," commented Paul Coebergh van den Braak, Chair of BusinessEurope’s Free Movement of Goods and Standardisation Manager at Philips Intellectual Property & Standards. Mette Peetz-Schou, Senior Chief Adviser at Danish Industries and Chair of Orgalim’s Technical Committee also stated that "We need the EU Single Market to work properly for European industry: we need change, we need a ‘new deal' for standards. Orgalim, together with an alliance of over 20 industry federations, is therefore calling on EU policymakers for a ‘New Deal’ to restore mutual trust among all parties involved, starting with the main standardisation stakeholder: industry.

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, this requires an urgent assessment of the legal and practical impacts on companies, especially SMEs, and to re-engage the industry, whose market needs are now better met by international rather than European standardisation. As pointed out by Caterina Brusasco, R&D Compliance Domain Expert at IBA (COCIR): "Among other, the harmonisation of European standards facilitates the rapid access of medical devices to the European Single Market".

The panel then opened the debate for questions, which led to an animated discussion among the wide audience of policymakers and industry players. Judge for yourself: access a copy of the slides here and the recording here.

See our earlier position 'For a restored mutual trust in a market-relevant European Standardisation System' here.

Our next roundtable "An ecosystems approach to industrial resilience", part of the "European industrial strategy in focus" series, will drill into the European industry’s future resilience and the role of ecosystems. It will take place on 10 July and we would be delighted to host you again. Registrations are now open. And don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to stay tuned for more news on events and our industry.

Mette Peetz-Schou presents #EUindustry call for #NewDeal4Standars: Independent assessment of standardisation regulation, to restore efficient mechanisms for development, assessment & use of harmonised #standards, and to involve industry in the discussions: https://t.co/fy4vmHBBN7 pic.twitter.com/yJaPNcgG2L
— Orgalim (@Orgalim_EU) June 2, 2020

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