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.

At the 3rd ETSI C-V2X PLUGTESTSTM interoperability event, held in partnership with 5GAA and hosted by DEKRA, Vodafone has demonstrated a new C-V2X platform designed to connect road users directly with transport authorities, enabling safety information, hazard warnings and traffic updates to be shared with users in real-time.  The new C-V2X platform is based on ETSI TC ITS and 3GPP mobile communication standards. Vodafone plans to launch the platform within its own Vodafone Automotive apps later this year. C-V2X (Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything) is an Intelligent Transport System (ITS) service using mobile communications technology for direct and network-based communication between vehicles, from vehicles to pedestrians and from vehicles to infrastructure. 2022 is an important year for implementing and deploying ITS services in many regions in the world, ETSI and 3GPP standards will play a significant role in making our roads safer.