A4-0209/97

Resolution on the communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament on 'Standardization and the global information society: the European approach¨ (COM(96)0359 - C4-0523/96)

The European Parliament,

- having regard to the communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament (COM(96)0359 - C4-0523/96),

- having regard to the report of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs and Industrial Policy and the opinion of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Citizens' Right (A4-0209/97),

A. whereas the existence of technical standards is an important means of ensuring ease of use and procurement of manufactured goods, free competition and customer choice, interoperability, security and efficiency,

B. whereas the definition and implementation of technical standards is not simply a technical matter, but entails decisive economic consequences, as the party who most influences the definition of a standard thereby acquires a competitive advantage,

C. whereas the official standardization procedure, which can lead to legally binding consequences, needs to be sensitive to the needs of all parties concerned, be they manufacturers, professional users, customers or the general public, and must therefore be open, unbiased towards or against a specific individual, group or, in the case of international and European standards, country,

D. whereas the proper procedural guarantees must exist to ensure the abovementioned aims; whereas this imposes formal requirements such as publication and the opening of deadlines for detailed consideration and reactions; whereas this necessity is the reason for the process of standardization being a lengthy one, even if some progress can and should be achieved so as to avoid unnecessary delays or deadlocks such as the one encountered in CENELEC with the failed attempt to define a European standard for electric plugs,

E. whereas, due to the speed of technological evolution, the life-cycle of products in the field of information and communications technologies (ICT) is in most cases too short for standards to be implemented or even defined in time,

F. whereas, in spite of this constraint, ICT enterprises are creating ad hoc groups to try and define jointly open technical specifications which aim at avoiding the parallel development of incompatible specifications or the dominance of a single proprietary specification within a given technology,

G. whereas such open specifications may in some cases become precursors of an official standard,

H. whereas this tendency should be encouraged, in particular by facilitating the open participation of the largest number of interested parties in such groups and avoiding abuse of intellectual property rights by their owners; whereas the concept of publicly available specification (PAS) developed at the level of the international standards organizations and implemented by CEN, CENELEC and ETSI is a suitable way to introduce such a kind of 'lightweight standard¨, provided the criteria and processes for their definition and implementation are clear and are founded on a proper legal instrument,

I. whereas the European standards organizations should carefully monitor whether their range of deliverables and procedures still meet market requirements, as ETSI has done by introducing the concept of 'ETSI Standards¨,

J. whereas standards, even where they contain intellectual property rights, should provide open access to the technologies contained therein on non-discriminatory, fair and reasonable conditions,

K. whereas the existing conceptual architecture in the field of the protection of intellectual property rights, with the co-existence of patents and utility models, can provide a reference for the relationship between standards and PAS or 'ETSI standards¨,

L. whereas the exclusive legitimacy of standards as a compulsory public instrument should not be undermined ; whereas, however, PAS and 'ETSI standards¨ could be an acceptable basis for public procurement where no better option is available and provided all requirements of open and equal treatment are fulfilled,

1. Welcomes the Commission communication, which addresses the issue of standards, specifications and the Information Society from a market and technology viewpoint, and which rejects the temptation of rigid or bureaucratic responses;

2. Considers that efforts should be continued to improve the speed and efficiency of standardization processes at European and international level;

3. Considers that progress should be made in particular in the following areas:

- involvement of small and medium-sized enterprises and their representatives, be they concerned as participants in the industry or as intermediate or final users of the technologies,

- involvement of consumers and their representatives,

- fostering of cooperation with the ISO, the International Electrotechnic Commission and the ITU,

- co-ordination of the work of national standards bodies; in some cases, the need for a two-step (national plus European) process within the Single Market should be questioned, as the recent disgraceful failure of the relevant standards organizations within CENELEC to carry to a positive conclusion the design of a European electric plug standard shows it may be a necessity to achieve any substantial progress,

- avoidance of duplicated effort between CEN, CENELEC and ETSI,

- standardization of software products as such and not only as interfaces to hardware;

4. Shares nevertheless the view that a more flexible instrument than a full official standard and a more open procedure such as European workshops offered jointly by the European standards organizations are necessary to respond to the challenge of fast-paced technological evolution of ICT industries;

5. Considers that this kind of instrument cannot be replaced by the indiscriminate use of so-called 'de facto standards¨, which bear a risk of incompatibility, obsolescence, and creation of unjustified dominant positions, but that the co- existence of the 'full¨ de jure standard and a lighter form of open specification should take the form of a family of legal instruments similar in conception to the family of intellectual property instruments;

6. Approves the principles followed by ETSI in defining the concept of ETSI standards based on transparency and openness criteria, but considers that, to envisage granting any form of official value to a PAS or to an ETSI standard, especially for recognition and publication by the Commission and for use in public procurement, the exact contents and extent of the criteria and procedures used for recognition should be determined in a formal EC legal instrument;

7. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Commission, the Council, the Economic and Social Committee, CEN, CENELEC and ETSI.