ABSTRACT
Standards serve to facilitate international trade and commerce by assuring product compatibility and maintaining an agreed upon level of product quality and safety. However, incompatible standards and the way a country certifies that a product complies with a standard can often create barriers to international trade. Testing and certification are perhaps the most prevalent means of using standards as a trade barrier. In recent years, the great majority of standards-related comments received by the United States Government from American exporters have concerned the nonacceptance by foreign governments of test data generated in the United States and the burdensome and time-consuming approval and certification procedures that are required for product acceptance in foreign markets. 1
The European Community (EC) is composed of twelve member nations, each with its own set of laws, regulations, standards, and conformity assessment procedures which govern the trade of goods and services. In preparation for economic integration, the EC is accelerating and streamlining its ongoing effort to harmonize differing national standards, as well as testing and certification procedures, into a single EC-wide body of uniform standards and regulations. Products that are not regulated by EC member governments 294for health, safety, or environmental reasons will be granted legal access to the entire EC market. Standards-related trade problems will be a matter for the private sector to resolve.
For products that are regulated by European governments, the EC has embarked on a three step process to counteract standards-related trade barriers. First, the EC has issued product directives that lay out essential health and safety requirements which each regulated product sold in EC markets must meet. Second, the EC has charged European voluntary standards organizations with the task of developing standards that manufacturers can use to meet those essential requirements. And third, EC product directives will specify a set of testing and certification procedures that manufacturers can follow in order to certify that their products conform to the EC’s essential requirements.
While many analysts view a unified European marketplace as largely beneficial to U.S. exporters, concerns have been raised that standards and conformity assessment procedures formulated by the EC could, in some instances, constitute non-tariff barriers to trade. Some U.S. manufacturers worry that they will be compelled to subject their products to costly and duplicative conformity assessment procedures carried out by European authorities. Similarly, American conformity assessment bodies (such as testing laboratories and quality assessors) are concerned that U.S. exporters will bypass their services for their European competitors. Controversy has focused on whether U.S. conformity assessment bodies will be officially sanctioned and recognized by the EC to perform tests and issue certificates needed by regulated products to gain access to the EC market.
The United States and the EC disagree on various options for allaying the concerns of some U.S. exporters, standards organizations, and conformity assessment bodies. Subcontracting, mutual recognition agreements, and the extent to which the EC will allow manufacturer self-certification are a few of the options that continue to be debated by Congress, the Administration, and the private sector.
This paper will focus on standards and conformity assessment activities in the EC, the potential impacts these activities might have on U.S. firms, and what roles might be played by government and the private sector in order to deal effectively with evolving EC standards and conformity assessment procedures.
