The European Commission has announced plans to update and speed up the way it mandates standards with the aim that Europe will be at the heart of setting standards around the world.
The Commission has already announced plans to concentrate on five areas: 5G communications, cloud computing, the internet of things (IoT), (big) data technologies and cybersecurity. They have now decided to focus on services standardisation and to finalise their work on mapping international, European and national service standards by the end of 2016.
The EU say that “European standards have proven to be an important policy tool for European policy making. Standards represent policy instruments which improve the functioning of the Single Market by eliminating technical barriers caused by conflicting national standards. They ensure the interoperability of networks and systems, grant a high level of consumer and environmental protection, they support and promote innovation. Standards benefit consumers, companies and society at large and contribute to the overall growth and competitiveness of the EU economy“.
Service standards could include everything from hotels to customer contact centres. This means it’ll affect everyone in the UK as banks, insurance companies, utility companies – just about every business you deal with – has a customer contact centre.
Doubtless it will also filter down to apply to online retailers as generally the only contact you are likely to have with your customers will be through email or telephone.
6 Responses
Screw the EU. The quicker we are out the better
I got an email from Paypal earlier trying to explain it.
My God it looked complicated, so I shall look at it later.
If anyone has an idiots guide then let me know.
That’ll teach me to read things when tired.
I think if I re read the email it’ll send me off to sleep again.
The paypal email was about
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New Interchange Plus fee structure
The European Commission is making changes to card processing practices in order to create a common market across the EU and European Economic Area (EEA) states. One requirement of the new Interchange Fee Regulation (IFR) is that PayPal and other payment providers must offer an unblended fee structure. This is why we are introducing Interchange Plus, a different fee structure for receiving credit and debit card payments.
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All this is going to do is add extra costs to business, we are not the same as other European countries so why try and make us. Don’t these numpties realize that the more costs they add on to business the less competitive we become and then the less we sell. And the Chinese and rest of the world will just becoming stronger economies.
There should be a rule in Brussels and Westminster, that every law and directive they make, they cancel or get rid of 3, This would make far better law making and concentrate the mind of these people .