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The European Committee for Standardization or Comité Européen de Normalisation (CEN), is a private non-profit organisation whose mission is to foster the European economy in global trading, the welfare of European citizens and the environment by providing an efficient infrastructure to interested parties for the development, maintenance and distribution of coherent sets of standards and specifications.
CEN was founded in 1961. Its thirty national members work together to develop European Standards (ENs) in various sectors to build a European internal market for goods and services and to position Europe in the global economy. Some of these standards are voluntary, whereas other standards such as harmonized standards have been made effectively mandatory under EU law.
More than 60.000 technical experts as well as business federations, consumer and other societal interest organisations are involved in the CEN network that reaches over 460 million people. CEN is the officially recognized standardisation representative for sectors other than electrotechnical (CENELEC) and telecommunications (ETSI).
The standardisation bodies of the thirty national members represent the twenty seven member states of the European Union, three countries of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) and countries who are likely to join the EU or EFTA in the future. CEN is contributing to the objectives of the European Union and European Economic Area with technical standards (EN standards) which promote free trade, the safety of workers and consumers, interoperability of networks, environmental protection, exploitation of research and development programmes, and public procurement. An example of mandatory standards are those for materials and products used in construction and listed under the Construction Products Directive. The CE mark is a declaration by the manufacturer that a product complies with the respective EU directive and hence the harmonized standard(s) referenced by the directive(s).
CEN (together with CENELEC) owns the Keymark, a voluntary quality mark for products and services. A product bearing the Keymark demonstrates conformity to European Standards.
The current CEN Members are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
The current affiliates are Albania, Croatia, the FYROM and Turkey.
The current partner standardisation bodies are Australia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Egypt, Moldova, Russia, Serbia, Tunisia and Ukraine.
See also
- List of EN standards
- ETSI
- CENELEC
- Ecma International
- Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements
- International Organization for Standardization
External links
- CEN homepage
- European Union standards policy homepage
- EN Standards The list of all EN (CEN) published standards. (Not complete)
- Duquesne University Citra, distributor of EN standards
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 13 October 2008, at 19:05.
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