Describes the country's standards landscape, identifies the national standards and accreditation bodies, and lists the main national testing organization(s) and conformity assessment bodies.

 

Overview

Many standards in the EU are adopted from international standards bodies such as the International Standards Organization (ISO).  The drafting of specific EU standards is handled by three European standards organizations:

CENELEC, European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (http://www.cenelec.eu/)
ETSI, European Telecommunications Standards Institute (http://www.etsi.org/)
CEN, European Committee for Standardization, handling all other standards (http://www.cen.eu/cen/pages/default.aspx)

EU standards setting is a process based on consensus initiated by industry or mandated by the European Commission and carried out by independent standards bodies, acting at the national, European or international level.  There is strong encouragement for non-governmental organizations, such as environmental and consumer groups, to actively participate in European standardization.

Conformity Assessment

Conformity Assessment is a mandatory step for the manufacturer in the process of complying with specific EU legislation.  The purpose of conformity assessment is to ensure consistency of compliance during all stages of the production process to facilitate acceptance of the final product. EU product legislation gives manufacturers some choice with regard to conformity assessment, depending on the level of risk involved in the use of their product.  These range from self-certification, type examination and production quality control systems, to full quality assurance systems.  You can find conformity assessment bodies in Estonia in this list by the European Commission: http://ec.europa.eu/growth/tools-databases/nando/.

Testing, inspection and certification

To sell products in the 28 Member States as well as Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland, U.S. exporters are required to apply CE marking whenever their product is covered by specific product legislation.  CE marking product legislation offers manufacturers a number of choices and requires decisions to determine which safety/health concerns need to be addressed, which conformity assessment module is best suited to the manufacturing process and whether or not to use EU-wide harmonized standards.  This section provides some background and clarification on the CE marking process. 

Members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) are required under the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT Agreement) to notify to the WTO proposed technical regulations and conformity assessment procedures that could affect trade. Notify U.S. (www.nist.gov/notifyus) is a free, web-based e-mail registration service that captures and makes available for review and comment key information on draft regulations and conformity assessment procedures. Users receive customized e-mail alerts when new notifications are added by selected country(ies) and industry sector(s) of interest, and can also request full texts of regulations.  This service and its associated web site are managed and operated by the USA WTO TBT Inquiry Point housed within the National Institute of Standards and Technology, part of the U.S. Department of Commerce. 

Publication of technical regulations

The Technical Regulatory Authority
National Technical Regulations 

Contact Information

Estonian Accreditation Center
Estonian Centre for Standardization

 

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