On 12 March 2014 defence standardisation stakeholders gathered at the European Defence Agency for an expert materiel standardisation conference. The main objective of the conference was to discuss the development of defence standards. The conference added a substantial contribution to the preparation of a roadmap for the development of defence standards as tasked by the European Council in December 2013.
Speakers from EDA, the European Commission, all three European Standardisation Organisations including the chairman of the Stakeholder Forum for Defence Procurement Standardisation (SFDPS), NATO, ASD-STAN, EUROCAE and UK DSTAN with BSI contributed with their high level of expertise on the subject.
It was underlined that the Member States will assess the need for standard development through the EDA Materiel Standardisation Group (MSG) at an early stage after the identification of potential materiel standardisation gaps. Furthermore the MSG will play an important role to coordinate security and defence standardisation activities with the European Commission to avoid any duplication of standardisation efforts. There was also consensus that the European Standardisation Organisations will play a coordinating role in harmonising the standardisation landscape. EDA will prepare through the MSG and together with the stakeholders of the SFDPS a more detailed roadmap for the development of defence standards based on the outcomes of this conference.
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