Standardisation is a very crucial concept for the European Union because it ensures that products and services are fit for their purpose and are comparable and compatible independent of their country of origin. Since a number of years, therefore, the European Commission, has shown an increasing interest in research projects on this topic.

Standards bring about a wide range of economic advantages to all Member States in the European Union, such as increased market access, simplification of contractual agreements, and lower production and warehousing costs due to a reduction in the number of variants. The European Union has recently commissioned several studies on the participation of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) in the European standardisation process. EIM has undertaken three different research projects on this matter.

Firstly, for a project commissioned by the EU?s DG Enterprise, EIM made an inventory of policies and instruments used by national governments, national standard bodies and SMEs, and by sector organisations in 32 European countries. This project aimed at fostering SME participation in standardisation. The measures identified and described, range from reimbursing travel costs to entrepreneurs participating in standardisation meetings, making standards available at lower prices to dedicated websites, and establishing a 'standard university'.  At a large international conference on Worlds Standards day in Brussels in October 2006, EIM presented the report 'SMEs and standardisation in Europe, 23 good practices to promote the participation of craft and SME enterprises in standardisation and the use of standards'. Link to the report.

Secondly, in relation to the standards for international trade, EIM was requested to participate in a mission to the Caribbean in 2007, to study the support needs for 15 Caribbean countries to upgrade their quality infrastructure, i.e. their standardisation and certification system. The Caribbean countries made commitments to do so in the Economic Partnership Agreement on international trade, on which the European Commission and the Caribbean countries decided in Barbados on 16 December 2007. The key tasks of this study have been to assess the current status of the quality infrastructure in each of the 15 countries and at regional level, to determine what improvements are needed and feasible, and to design a programme to realise these improvements accompanied by an indication of the budget required.

Furthermore, just recently in January 2008, EIM started another 15 months study for the European Commission on the access to standardisation for various types of interested parties in Europe, especially SMEs. This time, the focus will mainly be on the European standardisation system consisting of: the European Committee for Standardisation CEN, the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardisation CENELEC, and the European Telecommunications Standard Institute ETSI. Furthermore, links of the European standardisation system to the international (global) level and the national level will be part of the analysis. At the international level, procedures set by the International Standards Organisation (ISO) based in Geneva Switzerland and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC, international standards and conformity assessment issues for all fields of electrotechnology) play an important role in bringing about an effective and efficient set of international standards for business, government and society. This study is a unique opportunity to establish the factors that determine access to the standardisation system for the various interested parties, and to provide a set of recommended actions which could be considered by (European) standard bodies and the Commission to improve their access.