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

Hans-W. Micklitz
1. The pragmatic challenge – elaborating consumer requirements on
standardisation of services
The study may be understood as a reaction to the standardisation of services
already in action. The European Commission and the standardisation bodies at
national, European and international level have already set precedents long
before the overall policy on the role and function of standardisation in the
Internal Market for services has been officially approved, be it through the
adoption of the Service Directive, or through the adoption of a revised and
extended “New Approach”.
In this respect the study constitutes a reaction to ongoing activities. Its major
purpose is to sum up and systematically analyse the already existing
standardisation activities in order to define the core consumer elements which
should be respected whenever standardisation of services is initiated. The
above mentioned Service Directive provides the necessary legitimacy for such a
project.
2. The political challenge – contract law making through the back door
It is striking to see that the European Commission has strategically prepared the
ground for its policy on standardisation of services with the strong support of
those who are involved in the standardisation but under the exclusion of
broader political attention and by setting aside contradicting voices, such as that
of ANEC. This author wonders whether the European Parliamentarians are fully
aware of the European Commission’s intention to approximate, harmonise or
unify European contract rules on services via standardisation. This will be
explained below 47 .
The European Commission implicitly suggests in its policy papers that products
and services can be put on an equal footing. The contrary seems true.
Standardisation of products started as a device to rationalise the production
process. The original idea was not to set quality standards, but to guarantee the
inter-operability of products. That is why they were called “technical standards”.
There is a long-standing discussion on whether these technical standards
should and even must deal with the product design so as to allow producers
and countries which are not yet in a position to develop a proper design to use
the available technical standard as a blueprint for setting up production
industries.
47 See Chapter III, I, 2, f).
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