Finding/ obtaining a standard

How to find the relevant standard?

At European level, electro technical standards are developed by CENELEC, telecommunication standards by ETSI and other sector standards by CEN. At international level, the respective standardisation bodies are IEC, ITU and ISO.

Each of the National Standardisation Bodies offers an electronic search engine for the standards that are valid in a particular country. You can go directly to the main website of a NSB of your interest and follow the instructions how to find a standard. Some of the NSBs offer abstracts of selected standards, so in case you are not sure if the standard is the right one, it is sometimes worth visiting the website of other NSBs to get some more information. All European standards can be found on the national level. These standards are simply preceded by letters EN. You can also buy them through the national websites.

In addition CEN, CENELEC and ETSI offer their own search engines. However, all three organisations have a slightly different systems one has to get used to (see NORMAPME PowerPoint presentation). Besides, European Standardisation Bodies provide also information on the drafts of standards and new work items.

Similarly, all three International Standardisation Bodies i.e. ISO, IEC or ITU-T provide services allowing to find a standard via internet.

How to obtain a standard ?

CENELEC and CEN standards are sold only by their respective members. This means that you can only buy the European standards at the national standard organisations. The prices of the standards are different according to the member from which they are purchased, so it is worth comparing the prices especially that some national standardisation bodies offer the standards in the original working language i.e. English, German or French.

ETSI standards on the other hand can be downloaded free of charge directly from the ETSI website after simple registration.

International standard organisations sell their standards directly through their electronic portals. The standards of ISO or IEC can also be obtained through the websites the national organisations being members of ISO or of IEC. However, ISO web store is quite convenient one as it offers both ISO and IEC standards. ITU sells its standard through its own web store.

Please remember that standards are protected by copyrights and it is forbidden to copy them for further distribution or commercial use.

In order to facilitate a search for standards NORMAPME has prepared a PowerPoint presentation that gives a basic insight into the search engines available on the website of some standardisation bodies. You can download it here.