number 42 – may 2002 - anecanec newsletter no. 42 – may 2002 4 that the comm ission set out to...

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Number 42 – May 2002

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Horizontal issues 2 Child safety 3 Design for All 3 Environment 4 Information society 5 Services and standardisation 5 Traffic safety 5 News from ANEC members 6 Miscellaneous 7

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ANEC General Assembly 2002

The Extension of the New Approach and Challenges

for Standardisation

This year the ANEC General Assembly was held in Brussels from 6 - 7 May 2002. New modes of governance, the application of the New Approach in new sectors and implications for standardisation were the topics chosen for the second day’s discussion. Unfortunately, ANEC President Benedicte Federspiel was unable to attend due to a shoulder injury. All members wish her a speedy recovery. In her absence, ANEC Treasurer Malcolm Basset delivered the keynote address.

Keynote speakers at the open session included Alan Bryden, Director-General of AFNOR and CEN Vice President Policy; Anne Wilkinson from the European Commission’s DG Enterprise and Jim Murray, BEUC Director. The President’s speech reminded the participants of the ANEC position paper on the future of standardisation in Europe that called for the revision of the European standardisation system. She also referred to the challenges European standardisation is facing, such as the extension of the New Approach to non-technical areas, growing importance of international

standards and the role for standardisation in services area.

Alan Bryden talked about the CEN vision and experience in meeting consumer expectations in European standar-disation. He identified new areas for standardisation that challenge the CEN system to tackle safe consumer goods in the context of the revised General Product Safety Directive; traffic safety; safety and quality of services; internet services and e-commerce as well as environmental issues. He mentioned that CEN is in the process of reviewing its internal governance structures, which offers an opportunity to reflect on the issue of openness to stakeholders. He stressed CEN’s readiness for a partnership with consumers to promote safety and quality of products and in future services.

Jim Murray focussed in his speech on how to ensure the democratic principle in new modes of governance. Before embarking on new regulatory systems one has to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the existing regulatory system, he said. Alternative regulatory models should not be misused to bypass the European Parliament. In the event they are applied it has to be guaranteed that the European public authorities are the ultimate guardian of the public interest.

All copies of keynote speeches and documents can be obtained from the ANEC Secretariat upon request.

The European Consumer Voice in Standardisation

L to R: Franz Fiala, Jim Murray, Anne Wilkinson

Alan Bryden Vice President Policy CEN

ANEC Newsletter no. 42 – May 2002 2

Horizontal Issues New Consumer Policy Action Plan

The European Commission published its new Consumer Policy Strategy 2002-2006 on 07 May 2002. This sets the Commission’s strategy for consumer policy at the European level over the next five years. The three objectives set out by the plan are: a high level of consumer protection, effective enforcement of consumer protection rules, and the involvement of consumer organisations in EU policies. The Consumer policy in this Communication covers safety, economic and legal issues relevant to consumers in the market place, consumer information and education, the promotion of consumer organisations and their contribution with other stakeholders to consumer policy development. One area absent from the scope is that of food safety issues which has its own legislative agenda. The report can be downloaded from the following live link: http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/pri/en/dpi/cnc/doc/2002/com2002_0208en01.doc The Extension of the New Approach – Quo Vadis?

Guest speaker at the 2002 ANEC General Assembly Anne Wilkinson from the European Commission’s DG Enterprise gave an address on “The White Paper on Governance and the extension of the New Approach- Quo Vadis?” Conveying a personal view on the topic, Anne Wilkinson commenced by saying that she believed that the challenge for better European regulation is that the people want protection, involvement, social development and freedom – all at the same time. She suggested that the only way to do this would be to improve the quality of regulation by strengthening, simplifying, clarifying and involving the interested parties.

The New Approach is a tried and tested system, she said, with a lot of potential to expand- for instance in areas where the legislator lacks the technical expertise such as biotechnology to establish reasonable specifications. However, she left it unanswered whether the existing European standards bodies have the competence and expertise to fulfil this role. In conclusion, she stated that if the target was “real protection for consumers within a practical and comprehensible regulatory environment”, the New Approach offers some alternatives by contributing legislative protection, technical capability and representative credentials. The Keymark: Certification for Europe

In March 2002, the CEN Certification Board empowered the first certification bodies to grant the Keymark, more in particular, for thermal insulation products for buildings. The Keymark is a European CEN/CENELEC mark. It is a third-party certification mark indicating that a product complies with all the requirements of a European standard. Manufacturers can choose to apply for it on a voluntary basis. The introduction of the Keymark is an important stage in the development of a more open single European

market without technical barriers for trading. ANEC has always supported the Keymark, but is concerned about the difference in meaning of the Keymark between the CEN and CENELEC system. Taking into account that CENELEC standards deal mainly with safety issues, whilst CEN standards concentrate more on performance aspects, ANEC’s concern is that the integrity of the mark might be undermined while generating confusion rather than transparency for consumers.


Revised CEN/CENELEC Internal Regulations - Part 2 (2002) CEN/CENELEC Internal Regulations - Part 2: Common Rules for Standards Work (2002) have been published. Full document details can be found at the CEN website address: http://www.cenorm.be/boss/supmat/rd000.htm#b1

Child Safety European Standard for Child Resistant Cigarette Lighters Adopted CEN members have adopted the European Standard EN 13869 “Lighters – Child resistance for disposable and novelty lighters – Safety requirements and test methods”. ANEC members actively lobbied for the acceptance of this standard. ANEC has been striving for

several years to get a European Standard for child resistant lighters. Several fires were caused by young children playing with cigarette lighters which were very easy to operate. Following these accidents, the European Commission asked CEN to produce a standard for child resistant lighters.

European Child Safety Alliance Workshop - 10-12 October 2002, Portugal The European Child Safety Alliance, of which ANEC is member, will organize a workshop "What works in Child Injury Prevention: Bridging the Gap between Research and Practice". The intent of this workshop is to create an information exchange, open discussion and ways to determine and apply what works in child injury prevention. Hopefully this workshop will be a forum to provide more understanding between child injury research and practice and initiate more collaborative work for best practices in child injury prevention. The focus of the workshop will be discussing examples of good practice for child accident injury prevention as children live, learn and play. Programme details and further information can be obtained from www.ecosa.org.

Design for All European Year of Disabled Citizens 2003 The ANEC Design for All Working Group held its 8th meeting in Brussels on19 April 2002. The upcoming European Year of Disabled Citizens 2003 took priority, as the group will try to decide how to create an ANEC programme to incorporate this theme in 2003. It is hoped that included will be activities where ANEC can take a leading role together with the European Disability Forum (EDF) to contribute in 2003. Another top priority is to ensure that work that has been set out by the group will continue in the future. In this regard, the ANEC secretariat will be drafting an action plan for effective and efficient participation. eEurope 2005

Since the Barcelona Summit the European Commission is requested to come up with a proposal for eEurope 2002-2005 by June 2002. There is a concern that this program does not have enough focus on interests of disabled people and the ANEC Design for All WG wants to be proactive and have more activity on the subject. The original idea of eEurope was


that the Commission set out to launch an initiative in 1999 entitled "eEurope, An Information Society for All". It aimed to accelerate the uptake of the Internet in Europe. It proposes ambitious targets to bring the benefits of the Information Society within reach of all European citizens, by achieving three key objectives: Bringing every citizen, home, school, business and administration on-line; Creating a digitally literate and entrepreneurial Europe; Ensuring a socially inclusive Information Society. The ANEC Working Group also discussed the CEN/CENELEC Guide 6 (ISO/IEC Guide 71) and its possible contribution to the European implementation of that guide and possible ways of achieving connections with product standards.

Environment WED – Give the Earth a Chance World Environment Day is celebrated every year on 5 June, and this year is no exception. World Environment Day has been in the spotlight in recent years but the United Nations General Assembly established World Environment Day at the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment 30 years ago. This year, World Environment Day will be celebrated in the lead up to the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), an international gathering to assess progress towards the goal of sustainable development during the past 10 years and to develop a plan for the next decade. Standardised environmental reporting will also be one of the topics covered at the forum. For more information on the World Summit on Sustainable Development, readers can check the following website http://www.johannesburgsummit.org

First Empirical Study Connecting Eco Labelling and Consumer Behaviour

Underscoring the view from ANEC that Research and Testing efforts in the eco labelling arena are of utmost importance to the consumer, a recent Danish study shows that consumers are willing to pay extra for products they know are more sustainable. There are a number of eco-labels in use in the EU. Among them the newly launched Keymark: Certification for Europe from CEN for thermal insulation in buildings in March 2002. The EU eco-label scheme, the Flower, celebrates its 10 years anniversary in 2002. There are also national schemes, such as the Nordic swan and the German blue angel that have been applied for almost 25 years. The Danish institute of local government studies is one of the first empirical studies to show the relationship between eco-labelling and consumer's behaviour. Previous studies have mainly concentrated on the consumers' ability of recognising eco-labels. The Danish study analyses the effect of the Nordic swan on Danish consumers' decision. It draws the following conclusions:

• consumers are willing to pay 10-17% more for eco-labelled toilet paper and detergents;

• the market share for the Nordic swan labelled products is estimated to 6-7%;

• when there are more sustainable alternatives on the market, as e.g. reusable dishcloths instead of kitchen paper, consumers will not pay extra for eco-labelled products;

• consumers have confidence in the label.

The study shows that eco-labels can play a role in consumers' behaviour. However, the study would have to be reproduced in other countries to prove if the result is valid for the EU in general. Details of the report can be found at the following link and website address AKF


(Danish institute of local government studies): The Effect of the Nordic Swan Label on Consumers' Choice (http://www.akf.dk/eng2002/pdf/swan.pdf text)

Information Society ICT Working Group Meeting The 12th ICT Working Group meeting was held on 22 and 23 April 2002 in Berlin. 16 representatives participated in the meeting kindly hosted by Stiftung Warentest – Germany. The ANEC Secretariat would like to extend its gratitude for the excellent arrangements and for the interesting forum, which the meeting provided.

The first day of the meeting was dedicated to the update of the ANEC Consumer Requirements document. The revised document will be submitted to the European Commission and the European standards bodies.

Also discussed were the Next Generation Networks and the advance of Converging Technologies. The WG decided to prepare an ANEC position paper on the subject because of its complexity. ANEC has been taking part in the CENELEC TC205 on Smart Houses, and this work may migrate to a CEN Information Society Standardisation System (CEN/ISSS) workshop and the WG has decided to continue its participation in this forum. Other items on which ANEC will take action are

the CEN/ISSS Initiative on Privacy Standardisation and the eEurope Smart Card Charter and the Road Transport and Traffic Telematics.

Services and Standardisation Safety of Services – What Next for ANEC? The Safety of Services is rapidly becoming an important area for the European Commission DG SANCO, which will be presenting a report in this area in early 2003. Arnold Pindar, Chairman of the ANEC Coordination Group gave a short presentation of ANEC activities in this area. In response, Eric Hanson from the DG SANCO reaffirmed the Commission’s commitment to ANEC at the ANEC General Assembly. Mr. Hanson expressed his satisfaction that ANEC has taken to thinking about its role in Safety of Services in a proactive stance and this was what briefings of the intended report were indeed supposed to achieve. The initial report, which was covered in our March 2002 newsletter, was designed to “get the think tank rolling”.

Traffic Safety

Surprise Move - MEP’s Hesitant to Accept Voluntary Agreement on Pedestrian Safety!

After fighting for safer car fronts and opposing the proposal of a Voluntary Agreement at a joint press conference last month, on 19 April 2002, it was reported that the Voluntary Agreement on Pedestrian Safety was adopted by the European Parliament’s Transport Committee. Ironically, it accepts the voluntary approach for now, but asks for legally binding measures in the near future.


The Transport Committee's report, drafted by Ewa Hedkvist Petersen (Sweden, PES), agrees that a voluntary agreement could be quickly implemented, which is a commendable aspect. However, Road Safety falls under the co-decision procedure, and should therefore include the European Parliament in the decision-making procedure. Voluntary agreements undermine the role of the Parliament and the transparency of a political process.

The Transport Committee accepted the voluntary agreement for now, but calls on the Commission to propose a legally binding directive. Ironically, in the environmental field, the Commission has promised not to propose any new voluntary agreements until a EU framework is put in place. The proposed framework has been delayed for two years, but is expected by May 2002. The European Transport Safety Council, together with consumer organisations such as ANEC and the European disability forum, have openly condemned the voluntary agreement, claiming that road safety is a too important an area to experiment with non-legally binding instruments. The Parliament's plenary session will vote on the report in June.

News from ANEC Members The ANEC Secretariat would like to take this opportunity to thank all participants and keynote speakers that made the 13th ANEC General Assembly possible. ANEC Secretariat (left to right) : Muriel Rowies, Ayse Sumer, Christiane Franz, Dr Gottlobe Fabisch, Reetta Riikonen, Laura Asbjørnsen. (Missing: Tania Vanderberghe, Claudia Seybold)

Miscellaneous Forthcoming Meetings of Standards Bodies/Other Organisations

June Date Title 4 CEN STAR, Brussels 5 CENELEC General Assembly, Porto 10 - 12 ISO COPOLCO – Annual Meeting, Trinidad and Tobago, Theme: Corporate

Social Responsibility 13 CEN Sector Forum Gas “Utilization”

17 - 18 CEN Administrative Board, Dublin

19 ICTSB - Information and Communications Technology Standards Board, Brussels

21 ORGALIME - Industry for Electro Technical Products 26 - 27 EU Eco Management and Audit Scheme

European Conference/Brussels. The EU Eco management and Audit Scheme. Benefits and Challenges and EMAS II


Standards Out for Public Enquiry Date Title Reference

Number Technical Committee

Traffic Safety

2002-10-11 Road restraint systems – Part 2: Performance classes, impact test acceptance criteria and test methods for safety barriers ENQ (+FV)

EN 1317-2:1998/prA1

CEN TC 226

2002-10-25 Fixed vertical road traffic signs – Part 4: Factory production control

prEN 12899-4 CEN TC 226

2002-10-25 Fixed, vertical road traffic signs – Part 5: Initial type testing

prEN 12899-5 CEN TC 226

2002-10-04 Tanks for the transport of dangerous goods- Tank equipment for the transport of liquid chemicals – Product discharge and air inlet valves

prEN 14432 CEN TC 296

Environment 2002-10-04 Characterization of waste – Leaching behaviour tests – influence of pH on leaching with initial acid base addition


Horizontal - Services

2002-10-25 Personal eye equipment – Faceshields and visors for use with firefighters, ambulance and emergency service helmets


2002-09-18 General Requirements for bodies providing assessment and accreditation of conformity assessment bodies (ISO/IEC/DIS 17011: 2002)

prEn ISO/IEC 17001

CEN/CLC TC 1

2002-10-04 Mountaineering equipment – Dynamic mountaineering ropes –Safety Requirements and test methods

prEN 892 rev CEN TC 136

Child Safety 2002-10-18 Child Care Articles – Carry cots and stands – Safety requirements and test methods

prEN 1466 rev CEN TC 252


Published Standards Date Title Reference

Number Technical Committee

Services 2002-10-31 Transportation – Logistics and services- Public Passenger transport – Service quality definition, targeting and measurement

EN 13816:2002 CEN TC 320

Horizontal 2002-20-31 Safety net – Part 1: Safety Requirements, test methods

EN 1263-1:2002

CEN TC 53

Child Safety Doa: 2001-11-10

Classification of Toys - Guidelines

CR-14379:2002 CEN TC 52

Traffic Safety

2002-10-31 Safety f Industrial Trucks – Test Methods for measuring vibration

EN 13509:2002 CEN TC 150

Environment 2002-07-17 Packaging – Requirements for measuring and verifying the four heavy metals and other dangerous substances present in packaging, and their release into the environment – Part 2: Requirements for measuring and verifying dangerous substances present in packaging, and their release into the environment

CR 3695 :2002 CEN TC 261

2002-10-31 Flat pallets for materials handling – Principal dimensions

EN 13382:2002 CEN TC 261

2002-07-17 Packaging – Marking and material identification system

CR 14311:2002 CEN TC 261


Latest ANEC Comments

Title Reference Number Child Safety

Comments from ANEC on prEN 1929-7 - Basket trolleys - Part 7: Requirements and tests for basket trolleys with baby and child carrying facilities

Lobbying request for a positive vote on EN1080:1997/prA1 "Impact protection helmets for young children” Lobbying request for a positive vote on prEN 13869 "Lighters - Child resistance for disposable and novelty lighters - Safety requirements and test methods” ANEC reaction to the article published in the European Voice of 4-10 April 2002 regarding child-resistant lighters.

(ANEC2002/0123)

(ANEC2002/0134)

(ANEC2002/0135)

(ANEC2002/CHILD/037) (ANEC2002/CHILD/038)

Domestic Appliances

Lobbying request for support of document IEC 59/274/DC "Revision of 59/182/INF: 1997 Internal Guide - The principles of the work of TC 59 and its SCs"

(ANEC2002/0055)

Comment from ANEC on prEN 60335-1:2001/prAA:2001 (IEC 60335-1:2001/A1:200X - (61/2060/CDV) - IEC/TC 61) "Household and similar electrical appliances - Safety - Part 1: General requirements" concerning functional safety of electronically controlled toasters

(ANEC2002/0078)

Lobbying request for a negative vote on prEN 50366 "Household and similar electrical appliances - Electromagnetic fields - Methods for evaluation and measurement”

(ANEC2002/0243)

Further Information For comments, further information or if you wish to write an article for the ANEC Newsletter, please contact: Laura Asbjørnsen ([email protected])

European Association for the Co-ordination of Consumer Representation in Standardisation

Avenue de Tervueren 36, box 4 - B-1040 BRUSSELS phone: +32 2 743 2470 - fax +32 2 706 5430

e-mail: [email protected] - internet: www.anec.org

number 42 – may 2002 - anecanec newsletter no. 42 – may 2002 4 that the comm ission set out to...

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