Standards enable to be in agreement with present and future regulations.
They also enable to give a positive image of the company for actual and potential customers. The approach is voluntary for companies to be able to invest themselves at the most opportunate moment for their activity. The main differences between EMAS and ISO 14001 are that EMAS accreditation requires a public environmental declaration, validated by local authorities and a global environmental policy for the company and not for each site. Nevertheless, each site must have it's own declaration. EMAS standards are only applied in the EC, whereas ISO 14000 can be applied to any country in the world.