To aid in the development of a European Professional ICT workforce, it is important to provide education and training fit to meet the requirements of the ICT professional community. This requires enhanced approaches to address the education of new and existing ICT practitioners and the need for continuous professional development.

Technical Specification CEN/TS 17699 ‘Guidelines for developing ICT Professional Curricula as scoped by EN 16234-1 (e-CF)’ is designed to address ICT professionalism through education. It guides curriculum and learning programme developers through the process of forming ICT practitioner courses and programmes, along a pathway to support the development of a competent, professional European ICT workforce.

This Technical Specification provides guidance on the design/redesign, development and maintenance of a curriculum or learning programme to achieve alignment or compliance with EN 16234-1:2019  ‘e-Competence Framework (e-CF)’. The TS provides a methodology deploying the application of educational profiles as a step-by-step approach for verifying the alignment of programme content with the competences articulated in EN 16234-1 (e-CF).

ICT standardization plays an important role for interoperability and innovation and its practice remains a topic that is not easily accessible. To try to remedy this situation and prepare the next generation of standards professionals, ETSI has developed comprehensive teaching materials on education about ICT standardization. Written by a team of professors, researchers, and standards professionals, the first edition of the textbook was published in 2018 with the support of the European Commission and the EFTA Secretariat. We are now launching a fully revised and enriched edition of these teaching materials. These are targeted at third-level education, primarily for students of engineering or scientific subjects. The book and the slide set are structured in a modular form so that components can be used in business or law courses, or the whole can be used as a course on standardization in engineering degrees.

Due to the rapid technological advances in ICT, ICT standardization seems to become increasingly restricted to the expert, while remaining mysterious to the non-expert. Thus, the textbook is an attempt to remove the accessibility barriers related to the understanding of ICT standardization. The 1st Edition and the associated slides have already been used by many universities and students throughout Europe. The textbook and a comprehensive set of slides are available from the ETSI website free of charge at https://www.etsi.org/media-library/education

ETSI has just released GS PDL 011 the first in a series of specifications that are concerned with the implementation of permissioned distributed ledgers (PDL). This and following specifications will help with the realization of the numerous operational and security advantages of a decentralized approach to the recording of transactions, while simultaneously being both inexpensive to perform and inherently scalable.

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ETSI’s industry specification group for PDL (ISG PDL) was formed with the objective of establishing an open ecosystem upon which trusted and fully compatible PDL solutions could be built. The group includes mobile operators, semiconductor vendors, telecom equipment suppliers, agriculture manufacturers, automotive brands, plus several highly respected research institutes.

The new PDL group specification (GS PDL 011) produced by the ETSI ISG will provide a functional framework to adhere to when smart contract activities are being undertaken, without repudiation being a threat. This will thereby prevent the prospect of fraud occurring.

Since 17 March all smartphones sold in Europe are required to comply with Advanced Mobile Location for emergency communications. AML was standardized in ETSI TS 103 625 by the ETSI technical committee on emergency communications (EMTEL) in December 2019. It is already helping emergency services dispatch the needed resources efficiently in Europe and worldwide.

AML meets the requirements of the Delegated Regulation 2019/320 which makes it mandatory that all the smartphones sold in the European single market send the caller’s handset-derived location information when launching an emergency communication. The legislation specifically requires that smartphones process data from Global Navigation Systems, compatible and interoperable with at least the Galileo system, and Wi-Fi data to establish the caller's position. AML is a protocol to transport the data (using SMS and/or HTTPS) from the smartphone to the emergency call centre. It provides the accurate location of the caller to the Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) in a manner that is compliant with privacy regulations.

In parallel, ETSI is finalizing ETSI TS 103 825 that will provide the Test Purposes to develop AML test descriptions for handsets. This new standard will help Notified Bodies assess the compliance of manufacturers’ smartphones with AML. AML is supported by the main two operating systems, iOS and Android, and is already deployed in 30 countries worldwide.

The Commission proposed to update the EU consumer rules to empower consumers for the green transition. The updated rules will ensure that consumers can take informed and environment-friendly choices when buying their products. Consumers will have a right to know how long a product is designed to last for and how, if at all, it can be repaired. In addition, the rules will strengthen consumer protection against untrustworthy or false environmental claims, banning ‘greenwashing' and practices misleading consumers about the durability of a product.

The European Commission presented proposals to update and modernize the Industrial Emissions Directive, key legislation to help prevent and control pollution. Updated rules will help guide industrial investments necessary for Europe's transformation towards a zero-pollution, competitive, climate-neutral economy by 2050. They aim to spur innovation, reward frontrunners, and help level the playing field on the EU market. The revision will help provide long-term investment certainty, with first new obligations on industry expected in the second half of the decade.  

The revision builds on the overall approach of the existing Industrial Emissions Directive, which currently covers some 50,000 large industrial installations and intensive livestock farms in Europe. These installations need to comply to emissions conditions by applying activity specific ‘Best Available Techniques'. These techniques are determined together by industry, national and Commission experts, and civil society. The new rules will cover more relevant sources of emissions, make permitting more effective, reduce administrative costs, increase transparency, and give more support to breakthrough technologies and other innovative approaches.

The Commission signed grant agreements of €1.1 billion with seven large-scale projects via the EU Innovation Fund, funded by revenues from the EU's Emissions Trading System (ETS). These projects aim to reduce emissions by over 76 Mt of CO2eq during the first ten years of operation. The seven projects are deploying innovative low-carbon technologies at industrial scale, covering key sectors such as hydrogen, steel, chemicals, cement, solar energy, biofuels, and carbon capture and storage.

CEN-CLC/JTC 14 ‘Energy management and energy efficiency in the framework of energy transition’ (JTC 14)  published new EN 17463 ‘Valuation of Energy related investments (VALERI)’. The standard is an important breakthrough in the developing field of “green finance”, and it was the result of the efforts of many European experts invested in this work during the difficult time of the pandemic. Its unique achievement is that it lays down a clear and comprehensive path towards the economic evaluation of actions to improve energy performance, including multiple benefits and renewable sources, by proposing the use of “Net Present Value” (NPV) calculations.

 The methodology is expected to increase the confidence of financial institutions and investors in energy performance improvement projects because of the material integration of the technical and financial risk assessment.

CEN and CENELEC and their Members are fully committed to strengthening their relationship with researchers and innovators and promoting standards as tools to channel research outcomes and innovative ideas into the market. Standards are increasingly recognized as a crucial tool to get the most out of research results as they form a common language that allows researchers, people and industry to communicate, produce and commercialize products and services, as acknowledged by the “EU valorization policy”.  

On the other hand, a common misconception that can often be heard is that standardization can block innovation. New CEN and CENELEC Guide 39 on the role of standards in technology transfers helps to counter this argument by highlighting how standards promote innovation in the marketplace. The main target audience of this Guide are researchers, providers of new technologies, entrepreneurs, and start-ups that are interested in making use of standardization to support a research outcome into a market innovation.

In 2021, the European Commission launched the latest Research Framework programme: Horizon Europe. Horizon Europe will run from 2021 to 2027 with a budget of 95.5 billion Euros targeting researchers and innovators in pursuit of Europe’s strategic goals, with a focus on the green and digital transition.  The first set of calls for proposals (for 2021-2022) were published in June of last year, with 846 different calls addressing areas such as civil security, digital industry, climate and energy, bioeconomy, health and innovative ecosystems.

Consortia of interested organizations including national standards bodies and CEN and CENELEC can submit proposals. If selected, the consortia will receive the relevant EU funding to run the project.