NEWS
This year’s Meeting Standards campaign took place between 22 and 30 June, organized by Small Business Standards (SBS). The week culminated in the SBS Awards 2026, the inaugural SBS Awards ceremony that recognizes the experts and standards that strengthen the role of small and medium-sized enterprises in European standardization. The Standard of the Year 2025 was won by EN ISO 27799:2026 ‘Health informatics’, developed by CEN/TC 251.
As Ireland takes on the Presidency of the Council of the European Union, CEN and CENELEC, together with our Irish Member, the National Standards Authority of Ireland (NSAI), warmly welcome the start of this important chapter for Europe. We look forward to working closely with the Irish Presidency over the next six months to support its priorities and help deliver concrete results for citizens and businesses across Europe.
The June issue of the CEN and CENELEC newsletter 'On the Spot' is out now!
In March 2026, the CENELEC Technical Committee CLC/TC 111X ‘Environment’ published a new standard on the quantification and communication of carbon footprint and GHG emissions reduction from electric and electronic products. At a time when climate transparency is becoming a key expectation across global markets, this standard offers a harmonized approach to assessing and communicating environmental performance.
The Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) aims to address the increasing cybersecurity threats faced by hardware and software products by setting essential cybersecurity requirements for manufacturers, with stricter assessments for important and critical products. The European Commission has issued a standardisation request to the ESOs for the development of deliverables to support the implementation of the CRA.
Innovation is often associated with breakthrough technologies, disruptive business models, and visionary entrepreneurs. Yet the ability to transform an idea into a commercially successful product or service depends on something far less visible: the infrastructure that enables innovation to scale.
The Edu4Standards.eu project, funded by Horizon Europe, has set up the first European student network around standardization, called the European Students’ Standardization Association (ESSA).
As announced in the previous edition of On the Spot, June was dedicated to Education for Standards. The first highlight was the first Austrian Academic Standards Day in Graz, where Prof. Dr. Karl Grün, Deputy Managing Director of Austrian Standards International, highlighted the strategic role of standards in translating innovation into practice, building trust, and connecting academia, industry, and society.
On 12 June 2026, the Bulgarian trade union confederation Podkrepa, in collaboration with the ETUC, organized Bulgaria’s first-ever trade union awareness event on standardization. The event highlighted how technical standards ensure safe and healthy working environments and explored how workers and their representatives can actively engage in shaping them.
The EU has taken an important step with the adoption of its first framework for science diplomacy. The framework aims to strengthen Europe’s global role, promote its values, and foster more strategic and coherent international research cooperation.