Door Industry Journal - Summer 2018

Also online at: www.dijonline.co.uk THE door industry journal summer 2018 Industry News 8 Brexit, standards & legislation – a dhf update Introduction We are frequently asked, by members and others, what effect Brexit will have on standards and legislation. This update is an attempt to clarify some of the issues. Question: Will we adopt British instead of European standards? Answer: No, for several reasons BSI is a member of CEN, CENELEC and ETSI, the European standards bodies. These organisations are based in Brussels but are not part of the EU structure or agencies of the European Commission; they are independent bodies established under Belgian law. CEN, for instance, has 34 full members, including 6 which are not members of the EU. BSI has announced that it intends to remain a full member of the European standards bodies after Brexit. It is true that an amendment to CEN’s rules will be required to permit BSI to remain a full member after Brexit, but BSI is confident that this will be achieved. This is helped by the fact that a CEN rule change only requires a two-third majority as compared with unanimity in the EU. Assuming that BSI remains a full member of CEN, CENELEC and ETSI, it will continue to be obliged to publish all European standards as BS ENs and to withdraw conflicting national standards. The BSI catalogue contains about 37,000 standards. Of these, only some 16% are actually “home grown” British standards. They include some important ones, like BS 476, BS 7671 and BS 3621 but they are vastly outnumbered by standards developed either by CEN/CENELEC in Europe (32%) or by ISO/IEC internationally (52%). Of the ISO/IEC standards BSI has adopted, about half have been adopted indirectly via CEN/CENELEC, the other half being adopted directly. It is clearly impractical to ask BSI to create its own standards to replace even the European element in the current standards catalogue. In addition (see below), the UK government intends to retain EU legislation, including requirements for CE marking – this implies availability of European standards. Question: What is the future of CE marking? Answer: This is likely to remain in force, for the foreseeable future The EU Withdrawal Bill (also known as the Great Repeal Bill) is currently making its way through parliament. The significance of this legislation is threefold: • It repeals the European Communities Act 1972, thus removing the supremacy of EU law over UK law; • It takes some 12,000 pieces of EU regulation and converts them into UK law, to prevent a legal “black hole” after Brexit; • It enables the UK parliament to change these laws after Brexit, as the need arises. However, we understand that there are no immediate plans to change the laws relating to CE marking. In any case, provisional agreement has been reached between UK and EU Michael Skelding, General Manager and Secretary Door & Hardware Federation T: 01827 52337 E: info@dhfonline.org.uk