EU Court finds overriding public interest in free access to European standards [pdf]

https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2024-03/cp240041en.pdf

by wurzeltrick • 2 years ago

112 25 2 years ago

curia.europa.eu

European court ruled in favor of free public access to european norms referenced by legislature in laws or ordinances. This probably has widespread consequences for local norma like DIN in Germany. Case was initiated by Carl Malamud who fights for open access to standards.

https://www.righttoknow.ie/2019/04/02/right-to-know-and-publ...

graemep• 2 years ago

The case was against the European Commission who refused to disclose the standards.

I think it is clear in the article, but it is generally better not to say "European Court" but "European Court of justice" or "ECJ" to distinguish it (a purely EU institution) from the European Court of Human Rights.

margana2• 2 years ago

Saying "EU Court" is also non-ambiguous, as ECHR is not an EU institution, but a CoE (Council of Europe) institution.

atoav2• 2 years ago

Hopefully. I am an certified electrical engineer in Germany and the full norms I (and everybody else in Germany) have to comply with cost upwards of 1400 Euros per year.

Saying in the law you have to respect the technical norms and then be like: "Yeah but you can only see them when you pay a heckton of money" is totally immoral.

jijijijij• 2 years ago

I didn't know and wouldn't even have considered that to be the case. To be honest, that's actually mindblowing and infuriating.

tommiegannert2• 2 years ago

Fifteen or so years ago, Swedish legislators took the 200 pages of electric code, replaced them with 13 pages essentially just saying "whatever the Swedish standardization organization says is safe." And paywalled.

I can understand delegating from law to something that doesn't require 180 people agreeing on a change heavy in domain knowledge. I'm not an electrician, so I'm not allowed to do anything anyway (oh, the protected guilds,) but this is going in the wrong direction.

mordae2• 2 years ago

ISO is not publicly funded and "recommends" that end users pay for the norms despite many European standards organizations being government funded and operated.

If some of these organizations were to release ISO-derived norms to the public, they would be breaching copyright.

We should have an international treaty that says we fund these organizations from public budgets and everything they produce is open.

EDIT: Wrongly blamed US, but ISO is based in Geneva.

lucioperca3• 2 years ago

Not true, same for all DIN norms.

mordae2• 2 years ago

Deutsches Institut für Normung e.V. is publicly funded. Germany can unilaterally decide to publish the norms that do not incorporate other (usually ISO) standards.

margana2• 2 years ago

The EU does not answer to a higher authority, therefore only the copyright law of EU applies to itself. They can make any modifications to EU copyright law to make certain things lawful for themselves to publish, and then publish them.

Faaak• 2 years ago

Finally ! So glad, it may move forwards.

Norms are usually not free, but the funny thing is that each country's norm agency sets their price. So for example, EN 1991-1-1 (structural concrete load) costs 230€ at Afnor (France), 82€ at NSAI (ireland), and 28€ in EVS (Estonia). Same PDF

MonkeyClub• 2 years ago

The prices sound like cost of delivery, with Estonia having the most optimal system. I can get 28€ for administrative costs, but 230€ pushes it to latent mandatory annual taxation.

zihotki• 2 years ago

Original title of the press release: The European harmonised technical standards on the safety of toys should be accessible to EU citizens

I wonder if the same will apply for other common standards like low voltage electricity, construction, etc.

malermeister• 2 years ago

Between this and the right to encryption, EU courts are killing it today!

debugnik• 2 years ago

It's unclear to me if "free access" here implies free as in beer or just free as in "you can actually purchase the standard", since this is about the Commission actively refusing to non-profits access to these standards.

mistrial9• 2 years ago

yes and as this topic matures.. Who pays, and how much? frictionless data access is great to think about but not real; rent seeking mafia types are as old as civilization.. so, it is a negotiation of policy. Techies and their hardware have changed the world.. so, update this negotiation.

M2Ys4U• 2 years ago

Free as in beer, unless one requests a hard-copy of a long document in which case one will have to pay the cost of reproduction,

The applicant shall have access to documents either by consulting them on the spot or by receiving a copy, including, where available, an electronic copy, according to the applicant's preference. The cost of producing and sending copies may be charged to the applicant. This charge shall not exceed the real cost of producing and sending the copies. Consultation on the spot, copies of less than 20 A4 pages and direct access in electronic form or through the register shall be free of charge.

stefanoco• 2 years ago

The point (as discussed now within interested parties) is that Technical Standards, and namely Harmonized Standards in the realm of the so called "New Approach" to products compliance, are now cited as recommended and voluntary technical measures for reaching compliance to some EU Directive or Regulation. Up to now, technical standards are discussed and published in sort-of private organizations, although sometimes funded by governments. Here the court expressed the opinion that these Harmonized Standards have somehow lawful relevance and should be freely available (not paywalled) to all EU Citizends.

slow_typist• 2 years ago

Hard to overstate the importance of this ruling. I had to go to the university’s library to read DIN and EN ISO standards but was not allowed to print… printouts only for staff and students due to licensing terms. Nearly every craft in Germany needs access to standards and probably pays 4 figure amounts per year.

oskarw85• 2 years ago

I'm not sure but I understand that this ruling applies only to harmonised standards mentioned in the original rulin. So harmonised standards related to safety of toys directive. Not all harmonised standards.

EU Court finds overriding public interest in free access to European standards [pdf]

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