3.2.1.3 European Mechanism

Knowledge of the European rules, and particularly of the role of European standards in the implementation of “New Approach” Directives or the place of the CE marking, was limited to those companies exporting to Europe and to the central public authorities, i.e. the ministries responsible for the implementation of the directives.

Today most economic stakeholders, whether public or private, are well aware of the European system, even if the latter is not fully implemented. Two aspects have however to be pointed out:

• Small companies which limit their activities to the domestic market have not yet perceived all the consequences of the system on these activities. They are more oncerned with the regulatory aspect and less by the normative aspect!
• Consumer organisations have not yet integrated the new European provisions. In fact these provisions are either unknown or not properly known. There is for example much confusion between the CE marking and the existing Turkish marks. These organisations have absolutely not understood the place they could occupy in the technical mechanism constituted by the “standardisation/regulation” pair.

All our interlocutors finally pointed out that the follow-up of European mechanisms (directives + European standards) remained complicated and that they would like to have an adequate organisation at national level to coordinate such actions.

3.2.2    Application of standards

3.2.2.1    Use of standards

Generally speaking, in 2002 standards and other normative documents, whatever their origin, were widely used by Turkish economic operators. They were often de facto considered as being of mandatory application. This was mainly due to the fact that many stakeholders confused standardisation and technical regulations, and also that at that time, a large number of mandatory standards were mentioned in the legislation. In many cases also, certifications were required for access to some markets, which implied that the users had to abide by the relevant standards.

Such perception has quickly changed, thanks to:

• the transposition of the European instruments which insist on the voluntary nature of standards;
• the withdrawal of mandatory standards (see below);
• the development of quality systems associated with voluntary certifications and accreditations which are considered by users not as constraints but as tools for quality improvement.

Today, all stakeholders, whether public or private, widely rely on standards. They also recognise the voluntary nature of standardisation and that it is not necessary for a standard to be mandatory to be applied by the concerned parties!

3.2.2.2    Mandatory standards

Five years ago the situation regarding mandatory standards was very critical and of concern in Turkey. In actual fact:

• the number of mandatory standards was high but it was difficult to have precise statistics and the number of mandatory standards differed according to sources (ministries or TSE);
• these standards existed in many sectors, including those covered by “New Approach” Directives;
• they were perceived as the main technical obstacle to the import of industrial products from foreign countries, and particularly European countries;
• TSE bore a large responsibility for the situation because the Technical Board of TSE proposed to the ministries concerned standards to be rendered mandatory. TSE was also appointed responsible for verifying conformity with mandatory standards for import control.

To change the situation, it was decided that:

• the ministries concerned should re-examine all mandatory standards within their fields of competence in order to withdraw or maintain them depending on the normative developments in progress, i.e. implementation of a “New Approach” Directive, obsolescence of the standard, revision of the TS standard following the approval of the corresponding EN or ISO standard, etc. The Ministry of Industry and Trade which was in charge of approximately 80 % of the mandatory standards, set up, in cooperation with TSE, at the end of 2004, a working group in charge of this work within its field of competence, and prepared a plan for withdrawal of mandatory standards;
• TSE Technical Board should no longer give any opinion on the mandatory application of a standard. Only the ministry in charge would have the responsibility of both the possible initiative and the decision, and TSE should be excluded from the decision making process;
• the list of mandatory standards as established every year by DTM in liaison with the other ministries for import control should serve as a reference for the follow-up of the relevant pool.

The application of these decisions resulted in an important reduction in the number of mandatory standards.

Figure 1 gives a review of the situation as of November 2006. It is thus possible to compare the evolution of the situation since 2002 (See figure 1). 

Figure 1: Mandatory standards

The main comments are the following:

Generally speaking, the trend for reduction continues: 683 in 2005 instead of 777 in 2004 and 1250 in 2002, but the updated list has been shortened drastically in 2006: 261!

Ø      In the New Approach sectors, 29 standards are still mandatory (in November 2006, DTM envisaged that these standards would be deleted from the list on January 1, 2007).

Ø      In the food sector, 69 standards are mandatory. These standards deal with fruit and vegetables and no European standards exist for these products. Moreover the national TS standards transpose the specifications of the Codex Alimentarius.

Ø      In the other sectors, there are 163 mandatory standards. About 108 standards are more or less old and purely national, whereas 55 standards are the transposition of European or ISO/IEC standards. These standards deal with a lot of sectors: industrial equipment, automotive, road, and electrical equipment.

NOTE:  It is however worth pointing out the particular case of construction products. In this sector, although all new regulatory and technical provisions are available, the transition period, which allows co-existence of the two systems, has been extended until 1 January, 2007. At that date, only the new system, i.e. the application of the “New Approach” CPD Directive with the CE marking will be mandatory. For those products not covered by the CE marking, a new national mark, the so-called “G” mark, will be applied on the basis of national standards. The mark will be mandatory as of January 1, 2008, not the standard! The two systems will be able to co-exist where, understandably, no CE marking exists. This is the reason why, during 2006, the old system with its national rules (TS standards and TSE mark) continued to be used. This applies to approximately 400 Turkish standards.

3.2.3    Participation of the main actors

In 2002, TSE included 2 types of structures allowing direct participation: a “political” structure, the Technical Board, and technical structures, the Standard Preparatory Groups (SPGs) which covered all the technical activities. Although their responsibilities were important in the system (SPGs were responsible for proposing the adoption of a document as a TS to TSE), the internal rules of TSE greatly limited the number of experts able to participate in the work: 3 to 5 per group. Moreover the experts were appointed and financed by TSE. They were consequently not representative of the parties concerned and could be considered as “professional” experts.

The participation of the operators was as follows:

• Public authorities: they were represented in the Technical Board but not officially in the SPGs. In fact, as the experts from the ministries were members of SPGs, they were appointed by TSE as individuals and could in no way take advantage of a ministerial position. On the contrary, the ministries participated indirectly as they were consulted on draft standards and could send technical comments in some cases. It should however be noted that the participation of the public authorities was limited to the capital, Ankara;
• Industrialists (including laboratories): there was no direct participation. They could be consulted at random at the time of enquiries;
• Consumers: they were not present in the Technical Board or in SPGs. They were however consulted for some draft standards;
• Universities: they were represented in the Technical Board and a few were present as individuals in Ankara within SPGs and participated in random indirect consultations;
• Professional organisations/chambers of commerce: they were represented in the Technical Board and entrusted with the circulation of draft standards, but indirect consultation was not really organised.

The situation was not satisfactory either for direct participation (very few experts and not representative experts) or for indirect participation (consultation at random and no feedback in case of comments). The Turkish standardisation system was consequently not open enough and the members of CEN and CENELEC could not accept TSE functioning under such conditions. Finally the Turkish operators who were very critical of TSE on that point generally wished to be more closely associated with, and more deeply involved in the standardisation work, whether directly or indirectly.

In order to rectify this unsatisfactory situation, TSE took the following decisions:

• open up the Technical Board;
• amend the role of SPGs and limit their action;
• set up mirror committees to follow international and European work, with a balanced participation of all interested parties and nominations of experts officially representing the interested parties;
• organise indirect consultations in a better way.

Today the main improvements and/or modifications are as follows:

• concerning the Technical Board: new representatives, including a representative for consumers, have entered the scene;
• concerning indirect participation: at national level, TSE has signed an agreement with some professional organisations with a view to organising consultations on draft standards; at regional level, some regional organisations (in particular the chambers of commerce) and TSE local offices cooperate with the local stakeholders (industrialists, laboratories, etc.) in order to be more proactive, by for example sending comments;
• concerning direct participation: this has been reorganised in depth with the setting up of MTCs (Mirror Technical Committees), which are at the basis of the creation of a network of representative Turkish standardisation experts. These committees are in fact open to all economic actors. Several categories of stakeholders have accepted to appoint experts as official representatives of their positions within those structures. This is in particular the case for ministries and sectoral professional organisations. It should however be noted that for the time being not all categories of stakeholders are represented on MTCs. This is particularly true for consumer organisations. It is therefore necessary to consolidate this approach and to seek participation of all economic actors concerned within those committees. In a second stage, these actors will have to get involved in European and international work.

Generally speaking, the Turkish economic actors have a good knowledge of standardisation: the role and place of the standard in the technical mechanism, the European system (with the old and new approaches and the CE marking), the procedures for drafting standards and the differences between standards and regulations. The voluntary nature of standards is recognised and accepted by all stakeholders, public and private. Only consumer representatives do not completely master standardisation knowledge.

Standards are widely used within all sectors of the economy. Their application is promoted by the development of quality systems and voluntary certifications for products, services and management systems but also by the systematic reference by big companies and foreign clients to European and international standards. The TS standards published by TSE are thus at the core of the Turkish system because in most cases they are a transposition of the corresponding European or international standard. The number of compulsory standards has considerably decreased over several years. For import control for example, the number has decreased from 1250 to 261 in 5 years! It should continue to decrease as the public authorities have clearly displayed their intention to keep mandatory standards only in exceptional and clearly justified cases. As of 2007, all mandatory standards will be withdrawn in the fields covered by “New Approach” directives.

Concerning the participation of economic actors in standardisation work, a new dynamic movement has been taking place for 2 years. Until 2004, the experts were few and not representative. Since then a new generation of experts, public and private, representing the interested parties, has been created by the setting up of new committees at TSE. This is only a first stage, as the number of appointed experts does not cover all the sectors concerned. This new system has to be reinforced in the future by seeking to increase the number of experts and to extend the sectors concerned.