May 2020

MAY 2020 AFTERMARKET 15 www.aftermarketonline.net sart e p tiv omo utA tric subishi Elec Mit enuine 100% g Without Compromise eered and manufactured to the high f hi h i bi hi l d Mitsubishi Electric parts available erfP ormance Designed, engin ds quality standar or w c M tsu s E ectric is renowne exceeding the expectations of car and truck manufacturer t us f or contac or more information. , s. of the standard. This process is the key to achieving consensus. If consensus isn’t reached, then the draft will be modified further and voted on again or a majority of the votes is used. Once published, a standard could then be referenced in legislation and this can add another three years before it is legally required and perhaps another three years before it is implemented – it is not a fast process! International However, although many of these standards exist in the automotive sector and are frequently referenced in European legislation, the European Commission recently announced that this may no longer be the case. There are two key issues related to why the European Commission have made this statement. Firstly, that as you have to buy standards, there is a direct conflict with the principle that legislation should be accessed for free. Secondly, that ISO is a world- wide organisation with members in many countries and the voting process will be influenced by non-EU countries who may not support EU requirements. There is therefore a risk that instead of the legislator setting the requirements for a legislatively referenced standard, that the reverse will apply and that when an international standard is revised it could set the requirements for legislation. This creates the question of do we still need standards? The answer is a clear ‘yes’, as without them the automotive industry would be a very different industry - more complex and more expensive. So how could this be resolved from the legislative viewpoint? Implementation One possible solution could be that the European Commission replicates the requirements of a standard into legislation, typically as an Annex, but this is not as simple as it may sound. Standards are normally highly technical documents and to put this into the style of legislative text is difficult. A further complication is how to replicate the normal procedure in standards to revise them every three to five years to keep them up to date. Although legislation is revised, it is not done so regularly as a standard and there are specific processes to follow, which can take years to revise and then implement. In Europe, the only other possibility is to mandate CEN to lead the creation and management of the standards required, which is a more practical solution, but there are agreements between CEN and ISO (i.e. the Vienna agreement) that provides mutual recognition of each other’s standards, and in certain cases, the voting when a standard is reviewed is still conducted under ISO rules. Whatever the Commission decides to do, following Brexit there needs to be a similar solution for the UK (BSi will remain a signatory and participant of CEN), otherwise being able to simply plug-in and diagnose a vehicle could become a lot more difficult and expensive. xenconsultancy.com