A strategic vision for European standards: Moving forward to enhance and accelerate the sustainable growth of the European economy by 2020

Sir Brian Heap, President of EASAC, chaired a session on 'What can science offer' in a meeting on 'Putting Science into Standards: the example of eco-innovation', organised by the Joint Research Center (JRC) on 24-25 April 2013.

The European Commission Communication 'A strategic vision for European standards: Moving forward to enhance and accelerate the sustainable growth of the European economy by 2020' [COM(2011)311 final] notes that "the speed of the [standardisation] process must be urgently improved if we want European standards to play a global role". It goes onto note that science has a crucial role to play in this respect.

To address this challenge the European Forum on Science and Industry, which was established recently by the JRC, aims to create an environment whereby regular communication can occur between science, industry and standards. This would facilitate the screening of emerging science and technology and identify areas which should be introduced early into the process of standardisation in order to enable innovation.

The conference aimed to establish an agenda for action, to be implemented by the relevant policy and funding authorities.