The CEN Workshop Agreement shaped by EDU4Standards and refined through public consultation is now freely available from CEN-CENELEC, giving educators, standards bodies and policymakers a common reference for standardisation education.
The guideline that EDU4Standards helped develop through more than a year of joint drafting and public consultation is now an official European reference. CEN Workshop Agreement CWA 18456:2026, Guideline for education and training on standards and standardisation, has been published by CEN-CENELEC and can be downloaded free of charge.
In July, we invited the community to comment on the draft. The final text brings that input together into a practical reference for anyone who teaches or trains on standards. That includes universities, vocational education, in-company programmes and lifelong learning. The Workshop behind it was chaired by Knut Blind (Fraunhofer ISI), with Rudi Bekkers (Eindhoven University of Technology) as Vice-chair and the German Institute for Standardisation (DIN) holding the secretariat. The document explicitly integrates the learnings and best practices of EDU4Standards.
At its core is the Stand-EUVI framework, which covers standardisation education in line with European values and interests. It describes five interrelated competence domains for teachers and trainers: standardisation literacy, values-and-interests competence, pedagogical translation, facilitation and deliberation, and contextual and reflective professionalism. These domains are linked to nine education criteria, from attractiveness and interdisciplinarity to impact on learners and organisations. Courses can therefore be designed, assessed and improved against a shared benchmark.
The guideline’s starting point is that standardisation is not value-neutral. It asks educators to connect the values of Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union with four strategic European interests: competitiveness, innovation, sustainability and resilience. It also asks them to help learners analyse the tensions that can arise between these, such as rapid innovation and privacy, or resilience and individual freedoms. Teaching cases in Annex B show how this works in practice, ranging from the hidden assumptions behind a “norm person” to standardisation as a strategic issue in companies.
The CWA directly supports the 2022 EU Strategy on Standardisation, which made education and skills a key action in response to the coming generational change among standardisation experts. It also aligns with the High-Level Forum on European Standardisation’s December 2025 Recommendation on a Pan-European Certificate of Knowledge in Standardisation. Annex A explains how the certificate developed by CEN, CENELEC and ETSI, with public launch expected in the second half of 2027, will connect with “recognised courses”. Educators who adopt the guideline now will be well placed to align with it.
The document is aimed at educators and trainers, and it is equally relevant to national and European standards bodies, certification and conformity assessment bodies, policymakers and industry. We encourage all of them to download it, test it in their own context and share their experience with us.
The CWA and its uptake will be among the topics discussed at the EDU4Standards Final Event on 25 November 2026 in Brussels (hybrid).
