“Too many standards”: AFNOR sets the record straight
” Stung to the core, AFNOR defends useful standards “. The title chosen by the daily Les Echos in an article published on February 15 is well chosen: in the house of voluntary standards that is AFNOR, we felt under attack during the January 2024 agricultural movement which vilified “the excess of standards”. Accused of generating bureaucracy, red tape, disconnection from needs on the ground, additional financial costs, contradictions and unfair competition (from countries with less demanding standards), standards have taken a beating. ” On marche sur la tête” (We’re walking on our heads ), ” C’est le monde à l’envers” (It’s the world upside down ), ” Ces normes qui rendent fous les Français ” ( These standards are driving the French crazy ), as here in Var-Matin … And at times like these, it’s hard to ask people to press pause to explain what they’re talking about!
Voluntary standards, co-constructed by the grassroots
Through the media, AFNOR proposed a time for education, to distinguish between administrative standards, those resulting from laws, decrees, orders, directives and regulations, and which are at issue here, and voluntary standards, the ” useful standards ” referred to in Les Echos. To get out of the “hell of standards” and show the “other side of standards”.
Standards that are ” co-constructed by the grassroots ” and that this same grassroots is free to apply or not, as described by AFNOR CEO Olivier Peyrat on Sud-Radio’s morning show on Friday February 2 .
AFNOR’s 20,000 experts are involved in all sectors of the economy, as Guy Maugis, President of AFNOR, reminded us in an article published on January 30 in the Cercle des Echos and entitled “Too many rules yes, too many standards no! “. Norms that we’d like to call standards, like the English, if there weren’t a tiny semantic nuance between the two terms, a nuance we explain in our FAQ here. In any case, standardization is not the same as regulation(see again our FAQ): regulation is the “why”, the direction to follow; standardization is the “how”, the instructions and the best way to do things.
The world would be a less simple place if bankcard formats varied
And to each her own recipe: ” Laws are passed democratically by the people’s representatives; standards are made by consensus between market players. The law sets the rule;
the standard recommends good practices. And it’s not anti-democratic to say that the latter is sometimes more effective,” says Franck Lebeugle, AFNOR’s director of standardization activities, on Linkedin .
The result is clear: far from causing confusion, voluntary standards simplify life. ” If a Frenchman can use his bank card in London as well as in Hong Kong, it’s because a certain number of standards have been defined, such as card size, thickness and data processing protocols. The world wouldn’t be so simple if card sizes and ATM readers varied from country to country! “AFNOR’s Chairman explained in an interview with Challenges magazine in February 2024(article reserved for subscribers ).
This is an opportunity to encourage you to consult the book 30 histoires hors normes published in 2017 by AFNOR Editions (23.60 euros). Or go back to the history of barrier masks at the start of the covid-19 pandemic: a group of professionals meeting at AFNOR designed a tutorial for making masks for the general public, a kind of mini-standard that has been downloaded a million and a half times.
Or listen to entrepreneurs talk about their discovery of the world of voluntary standards… and their benefits for their business, as shown here by Stéphane Penari , founding director of Métalskin, a company that has developed an antibacterial coating. This entrepreneur came to the standard because he needed an objective, consensus-based method for measuring the effectiveness of bactericidal action. He found it in the NF S90-700 standard, now NF ISO 7581 , so that the methodology is the same internationally too: a true intercontinental passport!
Administrative standards: the sea serpent of simplification
Granted, there are undoubtedly things to simplify in the world of voluntary standardization. But the real work of simplification lies in regulatory standards! From parliamentary report to parliamentary report (for example, the one by Jean-Claude Boulard and Alain Lambert in 2013, and the one by MP Louis Margueritte in early 2024), from François Hollande to Bruno Le Maire recently in favor of SMEs, numerous missions and political figures have launched the project.
Recently, even the French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal beat his chest: ” To date, the number of words for standards on Légifrance is 44.1 million words. That’s almost twice as many as twenty years ago. At every level, I want to debureaucratize France “he said in his general policy speech. With this huge bill: ” We’re losing 60 billion euros because of the procedures and complexities of our daily lives.
Listen here to the “Le téléphone sonne ” program on France Inter from February 7, 2024, with the distinction between regulatory and voluntary standards at the 24th minute.
To the figure of 400,000 regulatory standards often quoted, without the source being very precise, we oppose our 34,500 voluntary standards and their constant volume: new standard published, old standard withdrawn!
Our figures for December 31, 2023 bear witness to this: 674 new standards published, such as the excellent ISO/IEC 42001 on artificial intelligence, and 1,530 withdrawn, 22% of them permanently, the others giving way to an updated version.
And with just as few standards made mandatory by regulations: around 500.
We’ll end with a nod to the world of agriculture, from which we’ve borrowed the codes of the upside-down city sign for our illustrative image: there are few voluntary standards in agriculture as such. The downstream sector (processing, preparation and distribution) is particularly concerned, with the famous ISO 22000 standard on
