Standardization is an important tool to complement national and European policies, because of its voluntary nature and its consensus-building approach between different economic players. CEN and CENELEC have been working for many years in collaboration with the Commission and other stakeholders to develop and adopt standards in support of numerous European initiatives and policies, including – but not limited to - sustainability. By providing new voluntary rules allowing, for example, the optimisation of the energy efficiency of products and systems, standards take an active part in the transition towards a greener economy.

The Green Deal is committed to using standardization in order to facilitate the transformation of our society. It is indeed what CEN and the CENELEC intend to contribute to in the years to come. The exchange of knowledge and good practices generated though the close links of CEN and CENELEC with their international counterparts, ISO and IEC, is a major asset for the development of standards in support of the Green Deal. This collaboration avoids the duplication of work and helps streamline and focus efforts in the areas where they are most appropriate. Furthermore, it allows to transition from a fragmented normative approach to a harmonised one.

ETSI has unveiled a new White Paper on Artificial Intelligence (AI). This White Paper explores key issues of AI that present both huge opportunities and new challenges for information and communication technologies (ICT). This ETSI White Paper surveys the many technical activities in ETSI that consider AI. They include 5G systems, network optimization, privacy/security, data management, semantic interoperability and testing across all areas. Each area is considering the use of aspects of AI, including Health and Human Factors scenarios. Key references from other bodies are included for global context.

ETSI unveiled a new white paper, written by the officials of the ETSI EP eHealth group, highlighting the role of standards developing organizations (SDOs) in developing standards for ICT to mitigate the impact of a pandemic. COVID-19 is not a mild pandemic, it is a serious, often lethal, health condition, the impact of which is seriously detrimental to social and economic life across the world. The ETSI paper acts to identify a "call to arms" to standards bodies and their constituent members to ensure that when the next pandemic arrives, we can rely on greater harmonization of the supply chain.

Standardization in the field of Circular Economy helps batteries maintain their quality and produce less waste. CENELEC Technical Committees are committed to providing these deliverables, and in particular the CENELEC Technical Committee 21X on Secondary Cells and Batteries (CLC/TC 21X).

Standardization is an important tool to complement national and European policies, because of its voluntary nature and its consensus-building approach between different economic players. CEN and CENELEC have been working for many years in collaboration with the Commission and other stakeholders to develop and adopt standards in support of numerous European initiatives and policies, including – but not limited to - sustainability. By providing new voluntary rules allowing, for example, the optimisation of the energy efficiency of products and systems, standards take an active part in the transition towards a greener economy.

The Green Deal is committed to using standardization in order to facilitate the transformation of our society. It is indeed what CEN and the CENELEC intend to contribute to in the years to come. The exchange of knowledge and good practices generated though the close links of CEN and CENELEC with their international counterparts, ISO and IEC, is a major asset for the development of standards in support of the Green Deal. This collaboration avoids the duplication of work and helps streamline and focus efforts in the areas where they are most appropriate. Furthermore, it allows to transition from a fragmented normative approach to a harmonised one.

Eleven new projects funded by Horizon 2020 programme under the European 5G Public-Private Partnership (5G-PPP) will start in September 2020. The objective is to gather opportunities in 5G hardware innovation and to validate 5G ecosystems for connected and automated mobility (CAM) along three new European cross-border corridors. The three new 5G cross-border projects (5G-Routes, 5G-Blueprint, 5GMED) will design, test and validate use cases in the field of mobility and transport under different geographic conditions and associated weather constraints. They will broaden the validation of connected and automated mobility features to roads, train, ports and maritime routes. Each project will provide a 5G network infrastructure that offers both multi-service and multi-application features to varied means of transport such as cars, trucks, trains, pods, barges and boats, as well as improved connectivity to public users.

The 5G Action Plan for Europe (5GAP) was adopted by the European Commission in September 2016 with calls for actions to achieve uninterrupted 5G coverage in all urban areas and along all main transport paths across Europe by 2025. It is expected that the 5G infrastructure will be a key enabler for the development of connected and automated mobility (CAM) by providing a broad range of digital services to the vehicle and paving the way to fully autonomous driving by the end of the decade on specific sections of roads equipped with 5G.

In the spring of 2020, the Strategic Advisory Body on Environment (SABE) will launch a new Joint Group on Circular Economy (JG-CE). The purpose of this Joint Group is to provide advice and coordinate CEN and CENELEC’s standardization activities related to the Circular Economy.

The transition towards a Circular Economy is widely considered as a necessary step to address the challenges related to the creation of a more sustainable economy. This will however require a transformation of our current ways of producing and consuming, collaborating and running businesses by closing the circle at the highest possible level (e.g. through repair or re-manufacturing), rather than exporting recyclable materials or applying thermal recovery. Standardization can help to provide a clear way to achieve these aims.

Standards already address a wide range of issues contributing to the transition, thanks to the work of a variety of technical committees (TCs). Both for the drafting of new standards and for the adjustment of existing standards, a coordinated approach will enable technical committees to develop standards concurrently while avoiding unnecessary duplications.

Engaging with Standards at the appropriate stages of research and innovation cycles is crucial to the development of new and evolved technologies. Identifying research topics for standardization at an early stage ensures that the requisite standards will be available to the industry when they are needed to support the relevant new technologies and products as they go to market.

Currently ETSI’s research and academic membership includes over 120 organizations, including public and private research institutes and universities from Europe and beyond. ETSI seeks to expand the existing research and academic community as well as reinforce the links with European research projects and platforms in order to build an active community of research and industrial partners, working towards a shared goal.

The sanitary crisis we are currently experiencing is a good example of where research results are essential to bringing new solutions and services to market in a timely manner. The world is looking for a vaccine against COVID-19, smartphone apps are being developed and deployed and the processing of massive amounts of medical and other logistical data is essential to mitigating the current and future pandemics.

To facilitate upcoming standards, the ETSI SmartM2M technical committee has released ETSI TR 103 546, a Technical Report on smart lifts, collecting and developing the type and range of data which should be exchanged between lifts and their relevant management applications. This study paves the way for technical requirements to monitor the activities and the performance of such lifts and describe their interaction with IoT devices and applications.

ETSI TR 103 546 specifies three categories of users and their role in the system: users of the lift with their needs, people and companies involved in this industry, such as manufacturers, suppliers or maintenance organizations and the owner or administrator of the buildings. Signals and controls are clearly identified, and a set of use cases highlights concrete and comprehensive examples of the usage and role of those signals and commands. The ETSI Technical Report outlines the complexity of the lift ecosystem, comprising both local and remote components which need to interact with one another as well as with external systems belonging to many different sectors. This leads to the conclusion that standards are key. Indeed, the whole system needs a full communication and interworking framework, able to reuse multiple communication technologies, to be interoperable, to integrate IoT devices and human interactions, and to provide semantic support and semantic interoperability.