Services Standards: Defining the Core Consumer Elements ... - ANEC

Services Standards
In the light of the foregoing analysis, the elements of best practice may be
broken down into leading principles, core consumer elements and minimum or
baseline requirements. The relationship between the three can be
demonstrated by a pyramid that is put upside down. On top of the pyramid are
the leading principles. They represent the broad ideas and concepts which
govern best practice. These leading principles may be concretised into core
consumer elements. These give shape to the leading principles and represent a
yardstick against which existing standards or standards under work can be
measured. The minimum or baseline requirements may be deduced from the
core elements. They are a slim version of the core consumer elements.
Minimum or baseline requirements might help to evaluate existing standards or
standards under work and defend the bottom line interests of consumers in
standard-making.
1. Leading principles
• Completeness – substantive standards and procedural rules on how to
organise the constant learning process. It does not suffice to determine
substantive standards, how comprehensive they might be (rights,
remedies, enforceability), it is equally indispensable to make sure
through appropriate procedural requirements that a constant
improvement of the existing level of standardisation can be achieved.
This seems to be the most important lesson to be learnt from the
economic background of best practice.
• Innovation – when there is no practice at all, each and every effort to give
shape to the elaboration of standards on consumer service could be
regarded as the existing best practice. Innovation is particularly important
in those fields of services where there are no legal requirements at the
national and European level, which may provide already guidance.
• Expertise – best practice implies a value judgment on what is considered
to be best. As long as standardisation of services involves technical
matters, the expertise must come from engineers or natural science
researchers. If standardisation of services interferes into contract
making, legal expertise might equally be needed.
• Legal language – it is plain that technical standards are not binding per
se. They gain a specific legal status only if the producers or service
providers voluntarily decide to subscribe to them. Outside contractual
commitments, technical standards may gain importance in product
liability matters. However, these limited effects depend entirely on the
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