Applying the Vienna Agreement by default
About the Vienna Agreement
The main provisions of the Vienna Agreement between ISO and CEN are cooperation: by exchange of information; by mutual representation at meetings; and by parallel approval of standards at the international and European levels. In addition, CEN members shall give all European Standards the status of national standards and withdraw any pre‐existent conflicting national standards. [Ref. ISO]
Roughly speaking this means parallel approval of standards at the international ISO and European CEN levels, i.e. “ISO/TC 211 standards become CEN standards”. Applying VA will not in a noticeable way extend projects, despite the CEN process where a parallel CEN ballot is sent out.
Applying VA is proposed by the proposer of the new project in ISO Form 4, by actively ticking the “CEN-box” under “Possible joint/parallel work with”. Voting members can comment on this in the NP ballot, e.g. it could turn out that for a certain standard several European members are against making it a CEN standard.
Applying the Vienna agreement by default in ISO/TC 211
The Vienna agreement (VA) will be applied to all proposed ISO/TC 211 international standard projects by default; this includes both new and revisions of standards. This is ensured by the Secretariat always selecting this option in Form 4. If a project wishes to be excepted from this practice, the project proposer notifies the Secretariat. A TC decision on the NP ballot can also exclude the standard from the VA. Applying VA for ISO/TC 211 standards means that they automatically become European standards. This practice was approved at Strategy and PMG meetings, 51st plenary, Dec. 2020.
Motive
The motive for this is:
- to avoid a random set of standards becoming European standards, as many proposers are unaware of the meaning of the VA option in Form 4, leaving the default choice which is not VA;
- to avoid EN ISO standards with a later year stamp than its corresponding ISO version, which is the case when standards have been added to the VA after being published;
- that the suggestion seems to be consistent with the overall intention of European members.
| Updated | 2021-11-11 |
| Contributors |
Chair |