A new edition of the CEN-CENELEC Guide 29 is now available

However, if emerging solutions have not yet achieved a sufficient degree of stability, a European Standard may not be the best way of meeting this need.

A CEN and/or CENELEC Workshop Agreement (CWA) is the perfect solution to combine innovation and standardization. A CWA is a deliverable developed and agreed by the participants of a temporary working group called CEN and/or CENELEC Workshop. The participation in a workshop is direct and open to all interested parties, including non-Europeans, and its proper functioning is ensured by a CEN and/or CENELEC Member running its secretariat.

Over two decades, around 400 CWAs have been developed on the most diverse subjects by CEN and/or CENELEC Workshops, supported by a dedicated guide – the CEN-CENELEC Guide 29 ‘CEN and/or CENELEC Workshop Agreements – A rapid way to standardization’.

In March 2024, Guide 29 was revised, aiming to improve user friendliness and provide greater clarity. Some of the changes introduced through the revision are:

• the exclusion of safety aspects from the scope of CEN/CWAs (as it was already the case for CENELEC/CWAs);
• the inclusion of a prescriptive consultation within the Technical Bodies that might fall under the same scope of the workshop;
• better definition of roles and responsibilities (CCMC, WS Secretary, WS Chair…);
• the merging of the Proposal Form and Project Plan templates into a Workshop Description Form to be submitted to CCMC as a single document at the beginning of the process;
• the improvement of the CWA New Work Item (NWI) form.

The revised Guide 29 and the benefits associated with the development of CWAs will be presented in a dedicated webinar on 18 June 2024 from 10:00 to 11:00 CEST. Register here.