What is CENELEC ?
CENELEC is the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization.
It was set up in 1973 as a non-profit-making organization
under Belgian Law. It has been officially recognized as the
European Standards Organization in its field by the European
Commission in Directive 83/189/EEC.
Its members have been working together in the interests of
European harmonization since the late fifties, developing
alongside the European Economic Community. CENELEC works with
35,000 technical experts from 19 European countries to publish
standards for the European market.
Structure and Operation
All interested parties are consulted during the CENELEC standards
drafting, through involvement in technical meetings at national
and European level (to establish the content of the draft)
and through enquiries conducted by the members.
The General Assembly (AG) is the highest-level body . It
makes all the policy decisions and is composed of delegations
from each of the 19 National Committees (NCs).
An Administrative Board (CA) of eight officers, led by the
President, supervises the work carried out according to the
AG's resolutions.
The Technical Board (BT) co-ordinates the work of the technical
bodies, which include Technical Committees (TCs), Sub-Committees
(SCs), special Task Forces (BTTFs) and Working Groups (BTWGs).
It is the BT, made up of one permanent delegate from each
NC, which decides on ratification, on the basis of national
voting, of draft standards prepared by the technical bodies.
The BT also approves work programs and monitors the progress
of standardization work. The different CENELEC technical bodies
are the following:
The Technical Committees (TCs) are established by the Technical
Board with precise titles and scopes to prepare the standards.
Technical Committees take into account any ISO/IEC work coming
within their scope, together with such data as may be supplied
by members and by other relevant international organizations,
and work on related subjects in any other Technical Committees.
Each Technical Committee establishes and secures Technical
Board approval for its program of work with precise title,
scope and scheduled target dates for the critical stages of
each project. These dates are reviewed at least once a year.
Subcommittees (SCs) may be established by a Technical Committee
(after Technical Board approval on justification, program
of work, title and scope) having responsibility for a large
program of work in which :
- different expertise
is needed for different parts of the work, and
- the range of separate
activities needs co-ordination over long periods of time.
The parent TC retains full responsibility for the work of
its SCs.
The BTTFs (Technical Board Task Forces) are technical bodies
set up by the Technical Board, with a view to undertake a
specific short term task within a target date and are composed
of a Convener and national delegations. A BTTF reports to
the Technical Board, its parent body.
The BTWGs (Technical Board Working Groups) are technical
bodies set up by the Technical Board to undertake a specific
short term task within a target date. They are disbanded by
its parent body once its task is completed. They are composed
of a Convener and of individual members appointed by the Technical
Board and/or the National Committees to serve in a personal
capacity.
Reporting Secretariats exist to provide information to the
Technical Board on any ISO/IEC work which could be of concern
to CENELEC. When the Technical Board wishes to examine a technical
problem or to investigate a situation in an area not already
covered by a Technical Committee, the Central Secretariat
may initially call upon a Reporting Secretariat to provide
what information is available. A Reporting Secretariat is
undertaken by a CENELEC member, usually the member holding
the Secretariat of the concerned IEC/TC or SC.
CENELEC Conformity Assessment Forum (CCAF) replaces the former
sector committee ELSECOM. CCAF provides a forum for discussion
of policies and strategies related to conformity assessment
in the electrotechnical area, between representatives of the
different conformity assessment schemes, representatives of
their advisory structure, national interests represented by
the interested CENELEC National Committees and advisors from
European regulatory, economic and social partners.
Mutual Recognition Arrangement (MRA) is an agreement between
parties involved in conformity assessment, that is based on
the acceptance by the different parties of each other's results
from the implementation of one or more elements of the conformity
assessment scheme.
CENELEC Central Secretariat
Manned by 31 people, CENELEC Central Secretariat is a conglomerate
of services designed to answer the needs for European standardization
and to serve the purpose of drafting, organizing approval
on and publishing European Standards. CENELEC being a service
organization, the Central Secretariat has been logically organized
on the basis of a service model established by the Harvard
Business School.
Collaborating in harmony, the different services weave themselves
into one another in order to produce the very fabric of CENELEC
which supports European standardization.
The present capacity of work volume exceeds more than one
document ready for publication each calendar day.
|
