The Commission adopted a Communication on its Global Approach to Research and Innovation, Europe's strategy for international cooperation in a changing world. With this, the EU aims to take a leading role in supporting international research and innovation partnerships, and to deliver innovative solutions to make our societies green, digital and healthy.

The global approach to research and innovation reconfirms Europe's commitment to a level of global openness that is needed to drive excellence, pool resources to achieve scientific progress and develop vibrant innovation ecosystems. In view of this goal, the EU will work with international partners to create a common understanding of fundamental principles and values in research and innovation, such as academic freedom, gender equality, research ethics, open science and evidence-based policymaking.

CEN and CENELEC are putting significant effort towards integrating standardization with innovation and research in Europe. This strategic initiative was originally conceived in the CEN-CENELEC Innovation Plan (2018) and now supports Strategy 2030 objectives. The projects and actions to achieve this integration are focused towards 3 dimensions:

• New topics for standardization – deploying and reinforcing existing channels and sources to identify new standardization areas for CEN and CENELEC. Activities include working with the EC DG JRC (Joint Research Centre) later this year to identify possible upcoming topics for the common CEN-CENELEC – JRC action "Putting Science into Standards 2022’’ that will involve engaging with stakeholders (researchers, industry, policy makers, standardizers…) to initiate a discussion on opportunities and needs for which CEN and CENELEC can enable the development of the necessary standards.