What are technical standards for?
Standardization in mechanical engineering

For the European Union, standards are generally non-mandatory and voluntary.

In France, compliance with standards is mandatory in two cases:

• when required by ministerial decree; this is the case for 170 of the 20,000 French standards;

• when dealing with a public procurement contract.

The list of mandatory standards can be found in fascicule de documentation X 00-003 published by AFNOR.

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