Meeting Standards is a flagship European campaign created by Small Business Standards (SBS), the European association that represents SMEs in the standardisation process. Born from a simple but powerful observation, that small businesses are largely absent from the standardisation tables that shape their industries, the campaign was designed to change that reality.
Standardisation affects virtually every sector, yet SMEs often lack the awareness, resources or confidence to engage with it. Meeting Standards bridges that gap. Each year, the campaign mobilises standards bodies and SME organisations from across Europe to organise a wide and diverse range of activities: workshops, webinars, roundtables, training sessions and networking events, all tailored to help small businesses understand the value of standards and take an active role in shaping them.
Now in its fourth edition, Meeting Standards has grown into a truly pan-European movement, reaching thousands of SMEs across the continent and building a vibrant, cross-border community of businesses, experts and organisations united by a common goal: making standardisation work for small businesses, not just large ones.
Meeting Standards aims to:
Standards have many functions and cover an astonishing range of goods and services from lifts to cosmetics, from quality management to cybersecurity, and from tattoo hygiene to water management. They define the safety of objects we use every day and make life easier in a thousand ways. In this ever-evolving world, new standards are required and developed every year. And older standards are constantly revised or updated to ensure they are keeping pace with technological, societal and regulatory changes.
Standards allow…
Yet SMEs do not have a strong enough voice in ensuring that their needs are taken into account in the standards writing process. This is important as the final standard might therefore place unnecessary or inappropriate requirements on SMEs.
SMEs are facing some challenges when it comes to standards, namely:
Small Business Standards (SBS) is a European non-profit association co-financed by the European Union and EFTA Member States.
SBS was established in 2013 to make the standardisation system as inclusive, transparent and open as possible in line with Regulation 1025/2012 of the European Standardisation System.
Its mission is to:
SBS is the voice of 25 million European SMEs in standards through 22 member SMEs associations
SBS has some 78 qualified experts covering key industry sectors. These experts, annually appointed through an open call, represent European SMEs in more than 220 Technical Committees, Subcommittees and Working Groups at the European (CEN, CENELEC and ETSI) and international levels (ISO and IEC). These committees cover areas such as cosmetics, personal protective equipment, electric bikes, construction works and products, digital technologies, advanced manufacturing, radio equipment or circular economy.
Visit SBS’ website to find out more about its work and activities.
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