The membership consists of more than 50 participating countries, including all the world's major trading nations and a growing number of industrializing countries. There are two forms of active participation in the IEC's work. Full membership gives countries the possibility of fully participating in international standardization activities. Full members are National Committees each having equal voting rights.
Associate membership allows for limited participation of countries with limited resources.
Associate members have observer status and can participate in all IEC meetings. They have no voting rights. On becoming a member of the IEC, each National Committee agrees to open access and balanced representation from all private and public electrotechnical interests in its country. The whole organization of the IEC is designed to ensure that the National Committees play a leading part in all decision-making instances of the Commission. This enables the widest degree of consensus on standardization work to be reached at an international level.