Organization of standardization in the European Economic Area and the European Union

Most European countries are members of ISO and IEC. European manufacturers trade with those in other countries and regions of the world. In this respect, European countries must respect their commitment to the IEC "to apply, transparently and to the greatest possible extent, the Commission's international standards in its national or regional standards".

European standardization did not take shape until well after global standardization.

Indeed, the bodies responsible for European standardization - the European Committee for Standardization (CEN), the European Committee for Electrical Standardization (CENELEC) and the European Telecommunication Standardization Institute ( – ETSI) - were only created in the 1960s. Prior to this period, there had been links between various European countries, mainly in the electrical field within organizations...