Procedure of development
To be continued "Development of a European Standard"
A European Standard is initiated by a national standardising body, such as Austrian Standards Institute, by a European economic, technical, professional or scientific association, an international organisation or by the European Commission and/or the EFTA Secretariat (as support for EU Directives).
If agreement is reached on the project proposed, a sufficient number of national standards organisations is ready to cooperate and the financial resources for the secretariat are availble, a responsible Technical Committee of CEN (CEN/TC) will charge a Working Group (WG) with the relevant activities. CEN/TC and/or the national standards organisations can appoint experts to participate in this Working Group.
Headed by a Convenor, the Working Group will prepare the standard, the working language being English. One of the CEN members (national standards organisation) will be responsible for the Secretariat of the CEN/TC. The activities of the Working Group and of its Convenor will also be supported by a national standards organisation.
The final objective is the preparation of an EN within three years. Therefore, for each individual step time targets are fixed. If these targets are not respected for certain steps, a prolongation can be requested. Otherwise the whole standard project will be cancelled from the working programme.
If the Working Group has agreed upon a Draft European Standard (prEN), the public enquiry is initiated. Within five month starting from this date, the national standards organisations have to submit national comments. In Austria, an "Entwurf (Draft) ÖNORM EN" is published in such cases.
Within six weeks the public can submit comments (using the comment table) to Austrian Standards Institute. It is recommended to formulate the proposals also in English. The national mirror body will than deliberate on these comments.
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