The European Union wants to dispute the standards of new technologies with China

The European Commission (EC) presented its strategy to challenge China for leadership in setting standards for new technologies, in particular for products linked to the ecological and digital transitions such as batteries or sustainable hydrogen.

The objective of the European Union (EU) is to counteract the plans that Beijing unveiled in October to become in 15 years the epicenter of the establishment of standards, regulations, production protocols and other characteristics of those technologies that will be key to the future.

But the Community Executive also wants “lead those efforts”, especially in “strategic areas” and priorities for the bloc, such as the transition to an economy free of greenhouse gas emissions or digitization.

In short, the intention behind the strategy, according to community sources, is to be “On the crest of the wave” and that the bloc’s companies, instead of being forced to accept foreign regulations, generate their own standards and export them.

“Technical standards are of strategic importance. Europe’s technological sovereignty, its ability to reduce dependencies and the protection of EU values ​​rest on our ability to be a global standard-setting actor.”, highlighted the Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton.

Brussels stresses that the standards are “the silent pillar” of the internal market and global competitiveness, as well as “a crucial aspect to strengthen the open strategic autonomy of Europe” because “third countries are increasingly assuming an assertive position” towards standardization or normalization.

Thus, the European Commission highlights, for example, the need to set standards for the data economy, to ensure the interoperability of robots, autonomous cars or machinery, on the production of green hydrogen or with respect to the characteristics of electric batteries.

To this end, the strategy proposes a series of actions to “improve agility and governance” of the European standardization system and “shorten the time needed to develop European standards”.

This supposes “better anticipate and prioritize urgent standardization needs in strategic areas” and optimize the internal functioning of the European organizations on which the task of standardization falls.

They are the European Center for Standardization (CEN), the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (Cenelec) and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and Brussels proposes a legislative proposal to increase the weight of public authorities in its decision-making, to the detriment of large corporations that “many timesThey are not European.

Another axis of action foreseen in the strategy goes through “increase coordination” between the interests of the EU and the Member States in international standardization organisations, since “will help tackle the current fragmentation” since the block “speak with one voice” in these forums.

A fourth pillar of the roadmap provides for greater support for innovation in projects financed with European funds and for this a “reinforcement to normalization” to support researchers through the Horizon Europe program for “check the relevance of their results for standardization”.

The last point of the strategy seeks to open the doors to “next generation of standardization experts” by boosting interest in this area in academic circles, for example by organizing EU University Days or training researchers.