3. Global standards organizations

The need to have common references for products (and possibly services) involved in international trade relations has given a particular impetus to global standardization.

Two essential criteria seem to guide the standardization process:

• on the one hand, the search for a relative harmonization of production, leading, among other things, to a certain degree of coherence and interchangeability of products, enabling larger production runs and compliance with the best practices of the sectors concerned; this approach, which tends to reduce variety, is typically standardizing and often voluntary;

• on the other hand, the desire to unify rules relating to safety (safety and security of use, etc.) and, increasingly, to the environment; here we are witnessing an interpenetration of the regulatory...