On the occasion of COP26, CEN and CENELEC released the new policy paper “Uniting the world to tackle climate change: COP26 and the commitments of European Standards”. In the document, the two European Standardization Organizations reaffirm their commitment to contributing to the fight against climate change and raise awareness on the actions they are taking to contribute to addressing these challenges.

In particular, the policy paper highlights the role of standards in contributing to the green transition: “Standards foster the process of innovation and encourage the faster development of more environmentally friendly technologies and materials. Whether it is by specifying tests or providing robust definitions that avoid misleading environmental claims, standards have a key role to play in addressing the climate emergency.”

Based on this potential, the standardization community stands ready to play their part in ensuring that both Europe and the world are equipped to deliver the social and economic transition necessary to reduce the effects of climate change, while also helping to deliver the infrastructure necessary to increase the planet’s resilience to adapt to its impacts. The full text of the Policy Paper is available here.

To support the transition to cleaner, greener, and smarter mobility, in line with the objectives of the European Green Deal, the Commission today adopted four proposals that will modernize the EU's transport system. By increasing connectivity and shifting more passengers and freight to rail and inland waterways, by supporting the roll-out of charging points, alternative refueling infrastructure, and new digital technologies, by placing a stronger focus on sustainable urban mobility, and by making it easier to choose different transport options in an efficient multimodal transport system, the proposals will put the transport sector on track to cutting its emissions by 90%. 

A smart and sustainable TEN-T: The TEN-T is an EU-wide network of rail, inland waterways, short-sea shipping routes, and roads. It connects 424 major cities with ports, airports, and railway terminals. When the TEN-T is complete, it will cut travel times between these cities.

he Commission has taken action to improve the cybersecurity of wireless devices available on the European market. As mobile phones, smart watches, fitness trackers and wireless toys are more and more present in our everyday life, cyber threats pose a growing risk for every consumer. The delegated act to the Radio Equipment Directive adopted today aims to make sure that all wireless devices are safe before being sold on the EU market. This act lays down new legal requirements for cybersecurity safeguards, which manufacturers will have to consider in the design and production of the concerned products. It will also protect citizens' privacy and personal data, prevent the risks of monetary fraud as well as ensure better resilience of our communication networks. The delegated act will be complemented by a Cyber Resilience Act, recently announced by President von der Leyen in the State of the Union speech, which would aim to cover more products, looking at their whole life cycle. Today's proposal as well as the upcoming Cyber Resilience Act follow up on the actions announced in the new EU Cybersecurity Strategy presented in December 2020.

ETSI is pleased to announce OSM Release ELEVEN. Committed since its foundation to the alignment with ETSI standardization work, this release completes the adoption of two new ETSI NFV specifications, ETSI GS NFV-SOL004 and ETSI GS NFV-SOL007 for package formats. Standards adoption is part of the OSM vision to enable interoperability and a large and healthy NFV ecosystem. In addition, Release ELEVEN includes significant functional extensions in areas such as interoperability with public clouds, interaction with cloud-native environments and integration of network functions of different natures.

OSM is also aligning with the most recent market needs, by implementing the latest technologies for managing Containerized Network Functions (CNFs). This is a major differentiator in the orchestration space, and an important requirement for deploying 5G network functions and higher.

The Commission has adopted three work programs for the Digital Europe Programme, outlining the objectives and specific topic areas that will receive a total of €1.98 billion in funding. This first set of work programs includes strategic investments that will be instrumental in realizing the Commission's goals in making this Europe's Digital Decade. The Digital Europe Program aims to bolster Europe's technological sovereignty and bring digital solutions to market for the benefit of citizens, public administrations, and businesses.

The main work program, worth €1.38 billion, will focus on investment in the areas of artificial intelligence (AI), cloud and data spaces, quantum communication infrastructure, advanced digital skills, and the wide use of digital technologies across the economy and society, until the end of 2022. Alongside this main work program, the Commission published two specific work programs: the first one focuses on funding around cybersecurity, with a budget of €269 million until the end of 2022; and the second one focuses on the set-up and operation of the network of European Digital Innovation Hubs, with a budget of €329 million, until the end of 2023.

The European Union has today committed to increase the role of trade in the fight against climate change and protecting the environment. It has signed up to three new initiatives to step up joint action in the World Trade Organization, sending a strong political signal on pursuing a strong environmental agenda for trade. The EU and a significant number of WTO countries will now work jointly on facilitating trade in green goods and services, promoting sustainable supply chains and the circular economy. They will also cooperate on battling plastic pollution and to enhance transparency of fossil fuel subsidies.

The Commission adopted a Communication on Sustainable Carbon Cycles, setting out how to increase removals of carbon from the atmosphere. To balance out the impacts of our CO2 emissions, the EU will need to drastically reduce its reliance on fossil carbon, upscale carbon farming to store more carbon in nature, and promote industrial solutions to sustainably and verifiably remove and recycle carbon. Removing and storing more carbon, from the atmosphere, oceans, and coastal wetlands, is essential to achieve the EU's legally binding commitment to become climate neutral by 2050. The Communication sets out short- to medium-term actions to support carbon farming and upscale this green business model to better reward land managers for carbon sequestration and biodiversity protection. By 2030, carbon farming initiatives should contribute 42Mt of CO2 storage to Europe's carbon sinks.