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

Hans-W. Micklitz
more circumscribed to the surroundings, i.e. the relevant parameters, and they
rely on cooperation and voluntary compliance.
The language of regulation constitutes another major difference, which results
from the different approaches. Law making is based on the idea how people
have to be behave. Here the law ideally sets clear-cut standards on social and
economic behaviour. Standard-making via standardisation is characterised by
soft wording, i.e. it does not define how people must behave, but how people
should behave. So the language is not that service providers shall have the
obligation to do this and that, but rather should have the obligation to do this
and that.
3. Legalistic outlook of standards
The outlook of technical standards resembles very much a piece of legislation.
This comes clear in the introduction which clarifies the purpose of the project,
the set of definitions on which the standard is based and the scope of
application.
However, despite the look-alike strategy standards are often not made by
lawyers and they do not constitute law in the proper sense. This comes clear in
the missing precision of value loaded legal terms. Here and there legal terms
are redefined without taking existing EC rules on the relevant area into
consideration. This is particularly so in the area of tourism services, where the
European standards on travel agencies and tour operators EN 13809 or on
hotel and other type of tourism accommodation EN ISO 18513 are standing
side by side with EC regulation on package tours.
Similar experiences may be drawn from the relevant articles in technical
standards dealing with complaint handling and dispute resolution. The
European Commission has adopted two Recommendations 98/257/EC and
2001/310/EC which lay down minimum requirements for dispute resolution.
These regulatory concepts are not taken into account. The same is true when
not simple but whole concepts are given a different meaning, e.g. the concept of
after-sales services in EN 14873-2 on furniture removal is being understood as
management of customer satisfaction.
4. Voluntary standards and (binding) law side by side
Standardisation is a thorny field as laws and regulations may have a varying
impact on the relevant field of standardisation. Whilst it must be assumed that
standardisation work will normally start with a stocktaking of all national,
European and international conventions, laws and regulations as well as
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