According to existing official records, an Agreement of principle was reached on 10 June 1960, during a meeting in Zurich attended by each EEC and EFTA country and ISO and IEC members, on the creation of “two parallel European standards organizations, one for ISO members and one for IEC members, and that the membership of these two bodies would be open to the ISO member bodies and IEC national committees in countries belonging the to the EEC and EFTA.” This date has been chosen as the official birthday of CEN and it coincides also with the establishment of CENELEC (at that moment known as CENELCOM). Based on this, 2020 is a year of celebrations, as it is the 60th anniversary of that agreement of principle.
It is an opportunity for CEN and CENELEC to launch several activities to commemorate this occasion:
Faces of Standardization
‘Faces of standardization’ is a project that will run all through 2020. It consists of a series of regular, monthly interviews to individuals who have been involved in different capacities in European standardization. The objective is to showcase the human aspect of standardization, i.e. give an overview of European standardization’s successes through the people who made it possible. For this reason, the selection of interviewees should be inclusive, to show the variety within the standardization community.
- Video interview with Christian WETTERBERG, Chair of CEN/TC 52 - Safety of Toys
- Interview with Carla SIROCCHI, chair of CEN-CENELEC JTC 19 - Blockchain & Distributed Ledger Technologies
- Video interview with Paolo FALCIONI, Director General APPLiA
- Interview with Dinesh CHAND SHARMA, Seconded European Standardization Expert for India
- Interview with Betty XU, Seconded European Standardization Expert in China
- Interview with Jean-Luc DETREZ, Secretary of CLC/TC 100X - Audio, video and multimedia systems and equipment and related sub-systems
- Video interview with Joachim NUNES DE ALMEIDA, Director at the European Commission - Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (GROW)
- Video interview with Brit HELLE, Director Internal Market Division - EFTA
- Video interview with Elena SANTIAGO CID - CEN and CENELEC Director General, Vincent LAFLÈCHE - CEN President and Dany STURTEWAGEN - CENELEC President
#TrustStandards Social Media Journey
A special and dedicated #TrustStandards token (keychain) is available at the reception of the CEN-CENELEC Management Centre meeting Centre.
Wherever you are in the world, take a picture with the token and post it on social media:
- Use #TrustStandards
- Tell us where you are
- Tell us what standard you see or are working on
- Tag yourself and or colleagues also working on standardization
- Tag the CEN and CENELEC account
By following this token’s journey around the world during the course of 2020, we as a community can show the importance of standards in all areas of life.
Follow us, we are on 
