1.2 National, regional and international standards and how they relate to regulatory regimes
National, Regional and International Standards
The first thing to remember is that standards start at the country level. Most countries have their own national standards-making bodies, and most of these are members of ISO and will have all of the following roles:
- they publish, and may write, their own national standards
- they represent their country in regional and international standards-setting fora
- they hold a reference library of national, regional and international standards
- they sell copies of standards
- Some also offer conformity assessment services such as accreditation, certification or other commercial activities
National standards bodies may also group together to make regional standards. For example, national standards bodies in Europe are also members of the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) as well as members of ISO. Together with its sister organizations, CENELEC and ETSI, CEN has a special role to develop European Standards that can support European Union laws (known as 'Directives') or broader European public policies. Other regional standards groups exist as well, such as for the Americas (COPANT), or the Asia-Pacific region (PASC).
The use of standards may be voluntary or they may be referenced in regulation (through which their use becomes mandatory). Note however that, even though standards are used in Europe to support pan-European legislation (under the 'New Approach'), their use still remains voluntary.
Under the World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, governments are required to base their national regulations on standards produced by organizations like ISO and IEC, as much as possible.
Partly because of these rules, and also because of the general globalization of trade, national and regional standards bodies are either adopting or otherwise using International Standards, where possible.