Competitiveness with European soul

Yesterday the European Commission tabled its proposal for a new Regulation on European standardisation, COM(2026) 780, repealing Regulation 1025/2012.

Having spent most of my career at the heart of the European standardisation system, my reading is clear: this is a serious and welcome attempt to put competitiveness at the centre of standardisation, while preserving the values that make the European model unique.

1. Evolution, with a touch of revolution. CEN, CENELEC and ETSI stay at the core, but must raise their game. Designated bodies can step in, and competition on equal terms is always good.
2. Speed as a design principle. Deadlines at every step, interim presumption of conformity, common specifications as a safety net, public KPIs. Exactly what the AI Act and the Cyber Resilience Act need: standards as innovation-friendly compliance tools.
3. The European model's DNA, kept and strengthened. Openness, consensus, identical adoption across Europe, and more seats at the table for SMEs, consumers, environmental and social organisations, researchers and persons with disabilities.

The Commission estimates €295m a year in compliance savings for business, with 78% of conformity-assessment savings going to SMEs.

Now the hard part

Free access to harmonised standards is the right principle, and it needs a revenue model built on pooled European investment and economies of scale, not fragmented national competition. Fallback bodies must complement and enhance, never fragment. And when Europe makes exceptions to "international first", it must do so united and coordinated.

Standards are what make policy happen in the market. They have been geopolitics for a while. Europe is reacting now.