Deutsches Institut für Normung e. V.

European Standardization

The objective of European standardization is to harmonize national standards in member countries.

The goal of European standardization is to harmonize national standards in member states. This is achieved by the implementation by each and every member of International Standards or, alternatively, the development of European Standards where European requirements justify this. Today, between 85 and 90 % of all DIN’s standardization projects are European or international. By comparison, in 1984 80 % of all DIN standardization projects were still national in origin. European standardization creates the framework for completing the Single European Market.

 
European standardization is overseen by the national standards body of each country. In the case of Germany, this is DIN. The decision whether to actively participate at European level is taken by a DIN standards committee. Technical input and consultation is provided by a national mirror committee, which determines the German opinion on a standards topic, develops its own proposals, and sends delegates to the European committee to represent the German standpoint and partake of the consensus process.

 
See also:
Developing European Standards 
European secretariats held by DIN
 

Vienna and Dresden Agreements
Since 1991, cooperation between ISO and CEN has been governed by the Vienna Agreement in a measure designed to increase the efficiency of standardization at International and European level. The aim of this cooperation is to work on the technical content at only one of the levels and to achieve simultaneous approval of documents as ISO and EN Standards by parallel balloting. A similar agreement has existed between IEC and CENELEC since 1996 under the name of the Dresden Agreement.