Systematic Review of National Standards
BEC is pleased to announce that the systematic review of national standards in electrotechnology has commenced. The procedure of systematically reviewing national standards occurs every five years, ensuring that these standards are up to date with the state of the art. Furthermore, reviews allow for the identification of possible redundancies with newer standards.
In theory, national standards result from work stemming from the Belgian industry. However, in practice, many of these standards are inherited from international and European standards, with minor modifications made for the Belgian market where necessary.
National standards that inherit directly from international standards are named “NBN IEC standards”, while those that are adopted by European standardization are referred to as “NBN EN IEC standards”. Lastly, national standards inheriting from European standards for which no equivalent international standard exists are referred to as “NBN EN standards”.
Some national standards do not have an international or European equivalent. These standards are referred to as “NBN C standards”, where the “C” is indicative of the field of electrotechnology. It is important to note that, prior to 1993, this nomenclature was also used for national standards adopted from European and international standardization, which is sometimes the cause of confusion.
The national systematic review process is as follows:
- These standards will be first discussed within their respective mirror committees during a mirror committee meeting.
- Next, the national experts within these committees shall be given the chance to evaluate the validity of the standards by means of a voting procedure, with the choices being to either confirm the standard for another five years or withdraw the standard. Given that, as aforementioned, several older standards adopted from IEC and/or CENELEC bear the same name as national standards without a European or international equivalent, BEC will also provide the committees with a third option of renaming NBN C-standards to be in line with the more recent “NBN EN” nomenclature.
- Based on the ballot results, the appropriate actions will be taken.