The European electronic fire and security industry, represented by Euralarm, wants to ensure that the European fire safety and security industry fulfills its potential to contribute to European growth and employment and that it reaches its abilities to compete in home and global markets. Standardization is key to be able to reach these goals, the body says. To speed up and maximize efficiency of the standardization process, Euralarm has written a Briefing on Market Driven Standardization (MDS), presented at Sicurezza, the Italian security exhibition in Milan.
Background
Euralarm says that members are already active in standardization and contribute to standards in electronic fire and security and services. Practically all standards in these fields have been developed with participation of experts of the members (and their members) of Euralarm. Being on top of the standardisation process, Euralarm members have good insight in the process itself and are not fully satisfied with the way the process has developed in the last years, the body says.
The member body says that establishing a functioning internal European market is of vital importance to Europe. This requires a comprehensive, coherent and effective standardization framework. To avoid delay and eliminate multi-billion Euros of costs the process needs to be updated and changed.
Industry-based Technical Standards facilitate interoperability between countries and promote greater alliance of fragmented markets, the body argues. This approach is in line with the ideas of the European Commission that calls for “an overall design for what the standardization should look like” and wants to “instigate an end-user driven standardization based on a careful identification of existing, national, European standardization organizations”. Euralarm strongly agrees with these calls and wants to support them through their new Briefing. The paper not only criticizes but also gives concrete proposals from experts involved in the day to day development of standards.
Euralarm believes that the standardization evolution process as we know it now, could be dramatically improved through some simple measures. A more EU-centric approach of CEN/CENELEC standardization is suggested. This would avoid unnecessary, time-consuming and costly duplication of work at a national level. This cost reduction would result in benefits for all stakeholders, from governments, through companies to the customers. To speed up and maximize efficiency of the standardization process, Euralarm gives ten proposals in the Briefing on Market Driven Standardization.
The briefing emphasizes the importance of a faster, more efficient standardization process. The current structure and the role of the National Committees are causing the European security industry to lose too much time and money on slow processes. More details in the complete briefing on the Euralarm website.
About Euralarm
Euralarm members are national associations and individual companies from more than 17 European countries. Visit www.euralarm.org.
