European Committee for Standardization (CEN)

The mission of the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) is to promote the European economy in international trade, the well-being of European citizens and the environment by offering interested parties :

• an efficient structure for developing, updating and distributing coherent sets of standards and specifications;

• products and services directly or indirectly related to standards and their use.

European Directive 98/34/EC , laying down a procedure for the exchange of information in the field of technical standards and regulations, recognizes three European standardization bodies in its Annex I. Together with the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), the European Committee for Standardization forms the European standardization system.

While CENELEC and ETSI are specialized in the electrotechnical and telecommunications fields respectively, CEN's scope of activity is formally limited to that of the other two European bodies. Founded in 1961, CEN was incorporated in 1975 as a private international non-profit association under Belgian law. On this occasion, the head office was transferred from Paris to Brussels.

Contact details for the CEN website are : http://www.cenorm.be