Position paper on EU standardisation bodies

UNIFE, the European Rail Industry, welcomes the efforts of the European Commission to strengthen the role of the standardisation in Europe. European standards not only have a very important role to play for the accomplishment of the Single Market, they can also set high-quality benchmarks for the international scene.

In order to reap the full benefits of an effective and efficient European standardisation system, UNIFE the association of the European
rail industry, in this paper suggests a number of measures aimed at improving decision-making transparency as well as focus and prioritisation of the works of the European Standardisation Organisations (ESOs) in the railway domain.

First of all there is a strong need to reduce the complexity of the system. The fact that there are three European standardisation technical committees active on rail matters leads to a difficulty in properly addressing the railways system in the complexity of all its internal interfaces.

Furthermore, UNIFE strongly believes that stakeholders should be more directly involved in this project management for a higher efficiency, should be able to more directly take part in the selection of the experts at European level and should fix the priorities for the works. A real and effective balance between the NSOs, representing the interests of all national industries members
(including SME) and the European sector organizations, representing the interest of the European railway market actors, shall be put in place.

Finally, the accessibility of standards requires improvement. To achieve this, the cost of access to standards, even more than the costs resulting from their implementation should be carefully analysed as it can represent an important barrier, especially for SMEs. Adequate systems to easily access standards online should be introduced as well as a real competition between distributors.

Source: UNIFE