Short instruction
Standards are technical specifications that provide rules for products, services, processes, etc. How a toy should be manufactured to be safe, the height of a chair to feel comfortable, the process of protecting a computer system from cyber-attacks and many others. Similarly, legislation also provides rules to be followed on a very broad range of topics, and sometimes overlapping topics. Standards and the law often have a complementary relationship: without standards, a law on product safety is too vague; without the law, standards in specific areas do not have the same outreach and success. Sometimes, the relationship between standards and the law is mere co-existence: standards may provide rules on a topic that is of no interest to the legislator e.g., hydraulic turbines, and vice versa. However, the hierarchy between standards and the law is always clear: the rules provided for by a law supersede any conflicting rules provided for by a technical standard.
The ILOs examples
K6.1., K6.3., K7.1., K7.2., K7.3., S6.2., S6.6.
Recommended Teaching Case studies/Serious games/Оther
Recommended duration of tutorials: from 30 minutes to 90 minutes
Recommended sources
If you are new to the topic, the basics can be found at:
https://hsbooster.eu/training-academy/legal-aspects-standardisation-relationship-standards-and-law-eu
Other sources relevant to the topic:
- Blind, K. (2024): The role of the quality infrastructure within socio-technical transformations: A European perspective, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Volume 199, 123019, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2023.123019.
- Degallaix, L., (2018). The Use of Standards in Legislation and Policies. How to ensure a legally sound and socially acceptable use of standards by policymakers in view of the CJEU James Elliott ruling and other court cases’ ECOS.
- Delimatsis, P. (2019). International trade law and technical standardisation. In J. Contreras (Ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Technical Standardisation Law: Further Intersections of Public and Private Law (pp. 7-27). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316416785.002.
- Delimatsis, P. (2018). Global Standard-Setting 2.0: How the WTO Spotlights ISO and Impacts the Transnational Standard-Setting Process, Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law, 28, 273-326. https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/djcil/vol28/iss2/3
- CEN CENELEC Guide 30, European Guide on Standards and Regulation – Better regulation through the use of voluntary standards - Guidance for policymakers.
- European Commission, Falke, J., Schepel, H., Legal aspects of standardisation in the Member States of the EC and EFTA. Volume 1 – Comparative Report, Falke, J., Schepel, H., Publications Office, 2000.
- Fontanelli, F. (2011). ISO and CODEX Standards and International Trade Law: What gets said is not what’s heard. The International and Comparative Law Quarterly, 60, 4.
- Gamito, M. C. (2024). The role of ETSI in the EU’s regulation and governance of artificial intelligence. Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research. https://doi.org/10.1080/13511610.2024.2349627.
- Kamara, I. (2022). General Court EU: Commercial interests block the right to access European harmonized standards. Journal of Standardisation, 1. https://doi.org/10.18757/jos.2022.6397.
- Kamara, I. (2024). European cybersecurity standardisation: a tale of two solitudes in view of Europe’s cyber resilience. Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research. https://doi.org/10.1080/13511610.2024.2349626.
- Kamara, I. (2022). ‘General Court EU: Commercial interests block the right to access European harmonized standards’ Journal of Standardisation, Vol. 1, https://doi.org/10.18757/jos.2022.6397.
- Kamara, I., (2017). Co-regulation in EU personal data protection: the case of technical standards and the privacy by design standardisation 'mandate'’, in European Journal of Law and Technology, Vol. 8, No. 1. https://ejlt.org/index.php/ejlt/article/view/545/723.
- Kanevskaia, O. (2022). The Law and Practice of Global ICT Standardisation. Cambridge International Trade and Economic Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Schepel, H. (2015). Between standards and regulation: on the concept of 'de facto mandatory standards' after tuna ii and fra.bo. Law, Economics and Politics of International Standardisation, pp. 199-214.
- Senden, L. (2017). The Constitutional Fit of European Standardisation Put to the Test. Legal Issues of Economic Integration, 44(4).
- Verbruggen, P. (2018). Tort Liability for Standards Development in the United States and the European Union. Forthcoming in J. Contreras (ed), Cambridge Handbook of Technical Standardisation Law, 2.
- van Leeuwen, B. (2013). From status to impact, and the role of national legislation: the application of article 34 tfeu to a private certification organization in fra.bo. European Journal of Risk Regulation, 4(3), 405–408. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1867299X00002713.