A proposal adopted on 6 October 2026
On 6 October 2026, the European Commission adopted in Strasbourg a proposal for a regulation on European standardisation (COM(2026) 780), which would repeal Regulation (EU) No 1025/2012, the legal foundation of the system for over a decade. The stated objective is threefold: to make standard-setting faster, to better involve SMEs and civil society, and to strengthen the Union's weight in international standardisation. The text responds to a diagnosis previously set out by the competitiveness compass and the single market strategy, which ranked the slowness of standardisation among the ten main obstacles to the proper functioning of the internal market.
The file is led by Stéphane Séjourné, Executive Vice-President for Prosperity and Industrial Strategy, who assumes its geopolitical dimension:
“Standards may be technical, but they are also strategic: those who set standards shape the technologies, products and markets of tomorrow. […] Europe must continue to set the rules, rather than merely following standards designed elsewhere.” (Stéphane Séjourné, Commission press release of 6 October 2026, Prometheus translation)
Why standards are an instrument of power
A standard is a technical document that sets specifications for a product, service or process: dimensions, safety, interoperability, cybersecurity. Most are voluntary. But harmonised standards, developed at the request of the Commission to support European legislation and published in the Official Journal, have a particular scope: a company that complies with them benefits from a presumption of conformity with Union law. In practice, they translate law into technical requirements and condition access to the single market.
The system is based on a public-private partnership between three European standardization organizations, CEN, CENELEC and ETSI, national bodies (such as AFNOR in France), industry, public authorities, consumers and trade unions. According to the Commission, jurisdictions that invest in developing standards are more likely to see their standards adopted globally. Batteries, clean technologies, cybersecurity, construction products or artificial intelligence: in these areas, the speed of standardization is becoming an issue of industrial sovereignty.
What the text changes
According to the Commission, developing a standard currently takes around six years on average. The reform aims to reduce this timeframe to four years, a reduction of about one third. To achieve this, the proposal notably provides for:
- clearer and binding deadlines for standards requested by the Commission, accompanied by real-time monitoring;
- clarified use of common specifications, presented as a targeted fallback solution when the expected standard does not arrive in time;
- the possibility, under certain conditions, of using external technical specifications and intermediate deliverables opening a temporary presumption of conformity;
- the involvement of other standardization bodies for urgent or highly specialized needs;
- strengthened obligations to ensure effective participation of SMEs, civil society, academia and public authorities, with a reduction in the cost of participation for SMEs;
- free access, via dedicated repositories, to harmonized standards and standards cited in EU law: approximately 3 650 documents out of some 27 000 European standards;
- the creation of a European Standardization Expertise Centre responsible for strategic steering, and better coordination of European positions in international bodies, in compliance with WTO rules.
A reform prepared since 2022
This proposal extends the standardization strategy presented by the Commission in February 2022. This led to Regulation (EU) 2022/2480 of 14 December 2022, which requires that certain decisions on standards requested by the Commission be taken exclusively by representatives of national standardization bodies of the Union and the European Economic Area. The aim was already to better ensure that the Union's interests, values and policy objectives are taken into account in the process.
The "free access" component codifies case law: in its judgment Public.Resource.Org of 5 March 2024, the Court of Justice of the Union ruled that harmonized standards are part of Union law and that there is a superior public interest in their disclosure. The principle of free access to law therefore also applies to these technical documents, previously sold by standardization bodies.
Artificial intelligence, a textbook case of regulatory lag
AI concretely illustrates the issue. The European AI Regulation (AI Act) relies on harmonized standards to specify the requirements applicable to high-risk systems. However, the political agreement reached on 7 May 2026 on the digital omnibus postponed the application of these rules to 2 December 2027 for standalone systems and to 2 August 2028 for AI integrated into regulated products. The Commission explicitly justifies this timeline by the need to have technical standards and supporting tools available before entry into force. In other words, the slowness of standardization has directly resulted in a postponement of the law.
European standardization bodies on the defensive
CEN and CENELEC reacted on the same day. They support the goal of acceleration, but believe that several elements of the proposal "risk weakening the very system it seeks to improve" and argue for a reform that strengthens the existing system rather than fragmenting it. According to them, the real bottlenecks occur before and after the technical work: the preparation of standardization requests by the Commission and the evaluation and subsequent citation of harmonized standards. They also fear that "parallel paths" entrusted to other bodies could create duplication, and they condition free access on a sustainable funding model.
"Europe needs standards more quickly to support innovation and competitiveness. But speed will not come from weakening the public-private partnership or from less predictable governance." (Ulrika Francke, President of CEN, press release of 6 October 2026, translation by Prometheus)
What remains to be decided
The proposal must still be examined and adopted by the European Parliament and the Council; at this stage it does not change any obligations for companies. The debate promises to be tight on a fundamental trade-off: how far to sacrifice consensus, which gives European standards their legitimacy, for speed, which gives them their influence? By giving the Commission more leverage (deadlines, common specifications, recourse to other bodies), the text shifts part of the normative power toward the European executive. This is precisely what the standardization bodies contest.
For an association attentive to digital sovereignty, the stakes go beyond the technical. Standards determine who writes the rules of the industrial game, and therefore which technologies prevail. The reform finally recognizes this strategic role. Its success will depend on the Union's ability to move faster without excluding the players, particularly SMEs, which standardization has long left behind.
Sources : European Commission, press release of 6 October 2026 ; Proposal for a regulation COM(2026) 780 ; 2eu.brussels, 7 October 2026 ; CEN-CENELEC, press release of 6 October 2026 ; Regulation (EU) 2022/2480, EUR-Lex ; CJEU, press release on the Public.Resource.Org judgment of 5 March 2024 ; Commission, agreement on the AI omnibus, 7 May 2026.