Technical Consultant’s comments – Patrick England

Impact on European Standards of the growth of the European Union

The Timeline:
1957 – European Economic Community formed with Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands
1973 – Denmark, Ireland & UK joined
1981 – Greece joined
1986 – Spain and Portugal joined
1993 – the HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maastricht_Treaty" Maastricht Treaty became effective, creating the European Union
1995 – Austria, Finland, Sweden joined
2004 – Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia joined
2007 – Bulgaria and Romania joined, bringing the total to 27
2010 – In the pipeline are Macedonia, Croatia, Turkey, Albania, Iceland, Montenegro and Serbia

The Rules for Decisions within CEN – within the European Standards Organisation, weighted voting is employed for formal voting on: ENs; in the TCs; and for the adoption of a work item for an EN or TC, in our case TC33 Doors, windows, shutters, building hardware and curtain walling.

The weighted votes are:
29 votes each: Germany, France, GB, Italy
27 votes each: Spain, Poland
14 votes: Romania
13 votes: Netherlands
12 votes each: Belgium, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Portugal
10 votes each: Austria, Switzerland, Sweden
7 votes each: Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Lithuania, Norway, Slovakia
4 votes each: Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Luxembourg, Slovenia
3 votes each: Iceland, Malta

A ‘decision in favour’ requires at least 71% of the votes cast (excluding abstentions).

The Implications – When CEN TC33 first started its work in the late 1970s a formal vote on any aspect of its work required, as a minimum, Germany, France, GB and Italy to agree, or if one of those disagreed then it needed Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg to agree instead.

Come forward to 2010. If the eastern European countries and only three Western European countries disagree, then a ‘decision in favour’ will not be achieved.

The fear is that with the ever increasing size of the EU, and with the additional members coming from Eastern European countries, we will soon be in a situation where, if they disagree on any aspect of the work carried out within the CEN TCs, then all the Western European countries will have to agree in order to achieve a ‘decision in favour’. Already we are seeing Standards being compromised in order to get them through the voting process; a situation which, in my opinion, can only get worse.