October 16, 2015

Yesterday 15 October 2015, SMALL BUSINESS STANDARD (SBS), the European association for SMEs in the standards making process, organised its first annual EU Conference on “Smart standardisation for SMEs”. The first of a series of annual conferences on standardization and SMEs, the event gathered speakers from the European Commission, European and National Standards bodies, such as CEN, DIN and UNI, as well SMEs and their associations. With SMEs at centre of the discussion, the speakers addressed the importance of standards in boosting competitiveness for SMEs, the advantages and the issues of the standardisation process for SMEs and the transition from European to international standardisation.

The President of SME Safety,timepiecebuy.org Alberto Spasciani highlighted that “Europe must support the competitiveness of its own SMEs by adopting only international standards that meet the needs of our companies. The adoption of ISO standards must be subject to an “SME fit test” as it is done for new EU legislation. We already have very good European standards that are used in many regions in the world besides Europe. We do not need another international standard to replace our good European norms”. 

Alberto Spasciani offered his experience as entrepreneur and standardisation expert in the field of Respiratory Protective Devices. “For 13 years SMEs in our industry have spent huge amount on resources to follow one single standard project at ISO, often involving more than 60 meeting-days per year. This standard, the ISO17420, has already been rejected twice and received thousands of comments from countries all around the world. For the good of SMEs, we must now stop this project that will only favour a handful of global multinationals and put in danger our SMEs”.