In an effort to strengthen transatlantic collaboration on standards, conformance, and market access issues, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and the three European Standardization Organizations (ESOs) CEN, CENELEC, and ETSI signed a document detailing the Principles of Cooperation among them during an August 29 and 30 meeting in Brussels. The signing was part of an ANSI-ESOs meeting to exchange information on a range of topics of mutual interest including approaches to innovation and initiatives on emerging technical issues.
The discussions during the two days event highlighted a number of crucial follow-up actions to facilitate even greater cooperation between the ESOs and U.S.-based SDOs on standards development projects. The groups involved identified several issues, which will be further discussed at the next ANSI-ESO meeting (tentatively scheduled for October 2019), including:
IPR/copyright/patent issues of common concern
Approaches and outcomes (cases and best practices) for reaching out to academic communities to educate and engage students, faculty, and research activities in standardization
The development of codes and their connections to legislation in the U.S. and in Europe
The participating organizations also focused on emerging hi-tech issues and shared their perspectives on growth areas, such as services standardization, bio-based products, and sustainability. ANSI and the ESOs will continue to promote international/global standards related to cybersecurity, the Internet of Things (IoT), and artificial intelligence (AI) and will support standards on terminology to facilitate a common understanding of relevant concepts.
Participants also discussed revisions of the Q&A documents related to the respective standardization systems addressing stakeholders' typical needs. Dedicated visibility actions will make the documents widely available online and help stakeholders understand the systems better as stepping-stones to improved market access.
CEN and CENELEC Director General, Mrs. Elena Santiago Cid, remarked after the meeting was concluded, "I am glad that we had the chance to exchange information and strengthen our relations through the signing of the Principles of Cooperation document. It is important that we keep the transatlantic standardization dialogue going in order to serve the interests of our stakeholders."