National and European marks of conformity to standards

Buyers of industrial products, whether they are consumers belonging to the "general public" or industrial users themselves, do not always have the means, or the time, to check for themselves the quality of the product they are being offered. When a product's technical specifications are laid down in a French standard, the NF mark, or Marque Nationale de Conformité aux Normes, affixed to a product or appliance means that it meets the prescribed conditions.

In the electrotechnical sector, product standards are virtually all harmonized at European level, and the various national marks of conformity to standards therefore have the same meaning. It was this identity of content that led to the first mutual recognition agreement between national marks, the CENELEC Certification Agreement, or CCA.

In an ongoing effort to simplify matters, the main European certification bodies then developed genuine common European marks to replace the previous collection of national marks. This process began sector by sector (HAR mark for electrical cables, CECC mark for electronic components, ENEC mark for luminaires).

Finally, with the support of the Commission of the European Communities, CEN and CENELEC have jointly developed a common mark to demonstrate the conformity of any product, whether electrotechnical or not, to the relevant European standard: this is the Keymark, which electricians were the first to apply extensively to household appliances.

It's likely, but not certain, that this somewhat patchwork landscape will be simplified in the years to come, to the benefit of a single European mark, the Keymark for example, or, why not, a global mark on which the International Electrotechnical Commission is already working.