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

IV.
Services Standards
• Technical standards should be reviewed in order to assess the consumer
impact on the respective standardisation project. This could best be done
in form of impact assessments to be executed by independent
consultants. Whilst the European Commission would have to provide the
necessary funds, CEN and CENELEC would have to grant access to the
documents.
• Standardisation of services should start from a horizontal approach
wherever feasible; e.g. education and skills, equipment and premises,
and billing methods, payment modalities, after sales services, consumer
satisfaction, complaint handling and dispute settlement. As consumer
representatives are not bound to a particular sector of services, unlike
business representatives in technical committees, they are in a far better
position to advocate for horizontal issues.
• Consumer representatives should take the lead in a pilot project on the
elaboration of a consumer focused technical standard on e.g. one of the
horizontal issues or on health and safety related issues. These would
allow close cooperation between consumer representatives in National
Standards Bodies, from national consumer organisations, from national
consumer agencies – as far as they exist – and from ANEC and BEUC. It
is for the European Commission to provide for adequate funding of the
pilot projects on a regular basis.
• Legal experts and technical experts should closely cooperate in the
elaboration of technical standards. Legal experts should set out the
regulatory framework, embedding the project of service standardisation
into the existing EC directives and regulations, as well as national
legislation, if there is need. Legal experts should check the outcome of a
technical standard before it is adopted.
To ANEC: The need for further studies
The broad approach which underpins this study has revealed the need to
initiate further studies in order to allow for a more systematic input into
standardisation of services. Available information has to be drawn together to
forge much stronger links between standardisation of services and the work
which has already been done in various fields such as:
• On education and skills; the European Centre for the Development of
Vocational Training (CEDEFOP) 477 has worked since 1975 on collecting
477 http://europa.eu/agencies/community_agencies/cedefop/index_en.htm.
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