EN

The European Standards

The European Norms (EN) are regulations that have been ratified by one of three European Standardisation Committees (the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardisation CENELEC, the European Institute for Telecommunication Standards ETSI and the European Committee for Standardisation CEN). All EN standards come into being as the result of a public standardisation process.

The development of a European Norm starts with the submission of a suggestion by a member of one of the European standardisation bodies (CEN, CENELEC or ETSI).

Willingness to cooperate at national level and the securing of a financial base establish the conditions whereby, in the case of CEN and CENELEC, the work may be assigned either to an existing Technical Committee or to a committee that has been specially constituted for the purpose. 

Applications can in theory be submitted by any person and may come from any quarter. A formally correct application that has been submitted will undergo various procedures before being allocated to the most suitable committee, who will then decide whether this should or could lead to the formulation of an EN standard. The object of the development of European Norms is the implementation of European legal prescriptions on the European domestic market and the facilitation of their application.