Today, services account for 70% of the EU’s GDP. Evidence shows that the market share and the employment generated by services will continue to increase, as the emergence of the collaborative economy and new business models provide further growth opportunities for the EU service and manufacturing businesses.

The ‘CEN Strategic Advisory Board on Services (CEN/SAGS)’ developed a ‘Strategic Plan on Services standardization’ in support of CEN-CENELEC Ambitions 2020, and in recognition of the untapped potential for economic growth of the services market in Europe. With this plan SAGS   sets itself an ambitious goal to engage further with industry stakeholders and associations to better understand how they may benefit from European standardization.

Standards - be-it national, European or international - have a role to play in the integration and performance of the market for services.

The use of service standards can contribute to help companies and organizations to

• manage compliance with national and EU regulation;
• drive up performance;
• cope with trends impacting services markets: digitization, servitization of manufacturing industry, globalization and new buyer behaviours;
• build more consumer trust;
• provide digitally enabled services …

Finally, standards can also increase the effectiveness of public and private procurement processes.