1.6 ISO’s actions and partners working for consumers

The ISO Committee on consumer policy (COPOLCO)

ISO seeks to ensure that its standards are market-relevant and meet the needs of the end-user. This end-user is often a consumer who is exposed to an increasingly global offer of products and services. As standardization plays a significant role in assuring that products meet essential consumer requirements for health, safety, and quality for example, standards are a key tool in promoting consumer protection. See Section 2 for more about how standards benefit consumers.

Realizing that consumers were an important stakeholder in standards development, ISO established a policy development committee in 1978, the Committee on consumer policy (COPOLCO). COPOLCO reports directly to the ISO Council, the governing body of the organization.

Today, COPOLCO has over 100 National Standards Bodies from among the ISO membership. Two-thirds of these are from developing countries.

COPOLCO has the following general objectives:

  • Making ISO/COPOLCO’s services available to ISO members worldwide
  • Supporting the development of consumer participation in standards-making
  • Studying how consumers can benefit from standardization
  • Promoting the positive role of standards in consumer protection
  • Encouraging the exchange of experience on standards work of consumer interest
  • Channelling consumers’ views both into current standards projects and proposals for new work in areas of interest to consumers

COPOLCO achieves these objectives by:

  • Coordinating participation by consumer representatives in selected areas of priority interest to consumers
  • Developing publications to promote consumer participation in standards work and to train consumer representatives for this task
  • Coordinating training activities and representation at events involving consumers and standardization issues
  • Organizing annual workshops that bring together representatives of consumers, public authorities, manufacturers and standardization experts
  • Preparing a range of Guides for experts, to help them address consumer issues and priorities more adequately when they draft standards
  • Preparing proposals for new standards projects

In relation to standards development at the national level, COPOLCO membership encourages networking. This assists consumer representatives at the national level to benefit from the experiences of consumers in other countries.

For specific contributions that COPOLCO has made to ISO's work, see Section 4.2

See the dedicated consumer area of ISO Online for more about COPOLCO. http://www.iso.org/iso/resources/resources_consumers