Due to the lack of balanced representation in many standardization committees the European SMEs' interests are often not taken into account. In addition, the national mirror committees are not always capable to involve representatives of SME community into the standardisation process. This is due to the fact that it is much more difficult for small businesses and their associations to devote their resources to any activities that go beyond their commercial interests. What is more, European SMEs usually lack qualified human resources to follow the standardisation work.

Consequently NORMAPME decided to start an Advisory Committee for experts in the ESOs. The AC would provide information on SME needs in standardisation to standard writers as well as investigate if the draft standards are adapted to the reality of SMEs. The Committee will be run by NORMAPME, but open to the feedback of any interested stakeholders.

NORMAPME believes that even without any binding powers this advisory body could have a significant impact by indicating the flows in the standardisation work and by proposing general solutions to the encountered problems. The AC will complement the work of NORMAPME experts participating directly in specific TCs. Besides, it is not always necessary and often very difficult to find a SME expert that could work on a particular standardisation area, so promotion of SME needs directly in the TCs/WGs is definitely a good way for improving standards.

• CEN-CENELEC guide on SME needs in standardisation

The first step of this initiative is to develop a generic guide on SME needs in standardisation. The guide will help to explain the reality of SMEs to standard drafters and promote the development of simpler, more operational and understandable European Standards. NORMAPME decided to write this document in CEN BT/WG so that the guide would have much more recognition among standard writers.

The proposal for the guide was accepted by CEN members in August 2008 and NORMAPME became the first associated member of CEN to hold a secretary and convenorship of the CEN Working Group. In October CENELEC also decided to join the project so that the guide would become a joint CEN/CENELEC publication.

The first meeting of the CEN/CLC/BT/WG 208 took place on the 19th November 2008 in NORMAPME premises. Over 30 participants were present which indicates high importance of the subject. The initial proposal was discussed in detail and in the following weeks NORMAPME presented the first Working Draft (WD1) of the guide for comments to the members of the group.

The second meeting (15th January 2009) and the third meeting (5th March 2009) were devoted to the discussion on the comments on the WD1. Besides the group discussed a self-evaluation tool for TCs/WGs that might be included in the guide. As a result of these meetings a second Working Draft (WD2) has been circulated for comments. The next meeting is planned for 28th April 2008.

• SME Advisory Committee

The parallel action is to investigate the developments in selected Working Groups/ Technical Committees in which NORMAPME is not present with an expert and which might be of importance to SMEs. After identification of the relevant groups NORMAPME will be actively try to help the experts, if necessary, to adapt the standards to small business needs. If in the process NORMAPME becomes concerned about some issues, it will try to nominate its own expert to investigate the problems in more details.

NORMAPME has already preselected 100 TCs of interest to SMEs and is now looking into the standardisation work of those TCs in more details.

Feel free to contact Mr Maciej Grzeszczyk at m.grzeszczyk@normapme.com for more details on the document.

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