SMEs PARTICIPATION IN STANDARDISATION PROCESS

Presentation

Who are we?

NORMAPME is an international non-profit association created in 1996 with the support of the European Commission, under the full name of the "European Office of Crafts, Trades and Small and Medium- Sized Enterprises for Standardisation".

NORMAPME is the unique European organisation focused on small enterprise interests in the European standardisation system. Its members represent over 11 million enterprises in all European countries, including all EU and EFTA member states.

The European Commission has supported NORMAPME during the first years of operation. Presently, NORMAPME carries out an EC contract offering standardisation services to SMEs.

Our values

We are strongly committed to the mission of defending SMEs in the standardisation process, as they represent the strength and the uniqueness of the European economy and society.

We are devoted to satisfy the needs of our member associations and to help SMEs to understand and adopt standards.

We support our members to act in defence of SMEs towards legislators and governments and we encourage SMEs to raise their voice in the standardisation process.

We contribute to maintain and improve the European economy by supporting companies that create employment and redistribute wealth.

We work democratically. We take every decision only after consulting our members and receiving the approval of the majority of them.

We transmit our trust in the EU institutions and in the Standardisation Organisations to our member associations and to European companies.

Our commitment

Our mission is to defend the interests of all European SMEs in the standardisation process. This mission is of crucial interest for our economic system and society as SMEs represent 99.8% of European companies and they employ nearly 81 million people, which is 66 % of Europe's total employment.

Standards are nowadays essential for SMEs as well as for any company operating in the internal market. The application of standards adoption ensures them several advantages as enlarging the potential market for products, facilitating product acceptance, lowering transaction costs, achieving economies of scale, reducing external effects (like environmental impact), guaranteeing interoperability, improving management systems, and so on.

Thus, the definition of standards can not be a privilege of big companies. SMEs must be represented.

Our impact

Our first and most important activity is the participation in the standardisation process: experts recommended by our member SME organisations participate in the work of Technical Committees at the European Standardisation Organisations ESO (CEN, CENELEC, ETSI) and at ISO.
Secondly we collect information on new directives, directives under review and standardisation works. Essential parts of this information are published in simple language using means like newsletters, specific circulars, website and seminars. All our publications are translated in six languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Polish, in order for them to be accessible by the largest number of Europeans.
Our members, all SMEs and their organisations have the opportunity to formulate proposals for the improvement of standards and directives. These opinions are debated in the expert groups that we facilitate in order to draft SME representative positions. Once these positions are finalised we promote them in the standards organisations, in the European Institutions and through the media by publishing articles and press communications.