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

Services Standards
• in Transport, CEN TC 320 (consumer representative from BSI Consumer
Policy Unit).
The short survey demonstrates that the consumer representatives raised their
voice in the large majority of all standards here to be analysed in more detail.
So the true question is not one of getting access to standardisation, but to what
extent the consumer voice is heard and listened to in the relevant committees.
CEN is much more relevant here than CENELEC. Formally speaking, the
CEN’s Technical Committees are in no way bound to take ANEC’s view into
consideration. A simple rejection might be counterproductive for the consentoriented
approach on standard-making and might even yield political reactions,
at least in the long run. In current practice, however, it depends to a large extent
on ANEC’s arguments alone whether or not it can bring its particular position
through. That is why the concrete impact of ANEC in standard-making could
only be evaluated by reconstructing the process of elaborating a specific
standard. This has been done in the area of toy safety, where ANEC
commissioned a study on the degree to which the then prevailing proposals
neglect the specific safety needs of smaller children 301 . In the areas here to be
investigated in the following chapters, a more general assessment of ANEC’s
impact might be enough to give shape to the idea that standard-making may
only gain democratic accountability if all stakeholders are given the opportunity
to make their views known and to influence the outcome of voluntary standardmaking.
As a last resort ANEC may contradict the publication of those CEN
standards which have to be published in the Official Journal of the European
Union. However, ANEC has no rights and no remedies to stop the European
Commission. It can only address the press and raise public awareness. This is
exactly what happened when ANEC criticised the publication of certain
European toy standards 302 .
III. The next step: Reviewing the existing EC rules and technical
standards against the core consumer elements
The analysis of existing best practice allowed me to draft leading principles and
to deduce from them the core consumer elements of best practice. These core
consumer elements will now be used as a yardstick against which are
measured
301 http://www.anec.org/attachments/R&T006-04rev.pdf.
302 See Comment from ANEC on Draft list of standards for consideration in view of publication
of references in the OJEU, ANEC2005/CHILD/077, November 2005.
105