Edition 4 (July 2024): the essence

About this issue

The newsletter restated its purpose: to enable broad stakeholder participation in European AI standards by sharing information on standardisation in CEN-CENELEC JTC 21, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 42 and other fora. Its content is reviewed by Task Group Inclusiveness but is non-binding. ETUC continues to provide the secretariat, contributions for the next issue were invited by 23 August, and publication was planned for early September. The newsletter was now also referenced in CEN-CENELEC's On the Spot magazine.

News from the European Union

The Commission opened a public consultation, running until 25 July 2024, on its evaluation of the Standardisation Regulation (EU) No 1025/2012. On 19 June it hosted the first high-level meeting of the future European AI Board, intended to drive implementation of the AI Act.

The 7th Sherpa meeting of the High-Level Forum on European Standardisation (14 May) reviewed the draft 2025 Annual Union Work Programme, which contains several recommendations on AI. Digital Europe and Small Business Standards proposed new areas of focus for the Forum. The workstreams reported progress on fundamental rights and standards (WS2), peer review of national standards bodies (WS3), alignment of European and international standards (WS4), greater civil society inclusion (WS5), and AI (WS12). WS12 met on 28 June and reviewed awareness initiatives on AI standards by ANEC, ETSI, Digital Europe and the national standards bodies of Denmark, Ireland, Malta and Sweden, while the Commission presented the Enterprise Europe Network for SMEs. A new workstream on quantum technology (WS16) was launched.

The Commission was also preparing a separate standardisation request for a European trusted data framework, covering five standards: data transactions, data catalogues, trusted ontologies and data models, quality assessment of internal data governance processes, and maturity assessment of common European data spaces. The request is independent of the AI request, but the two are clearly connected.

On 14 May, the European social partners in the banking sector published a joint declaration on the employment aspects of AI, setting out how AI systems should be designed, implemented and operated.

CEN-CENELEC JTC 21: the Bath plenary

The plenary and working group meetings took place in Bath from 3 to 5 June, with decisions taken on 7 June. More than 150 participants from at least 20 European countries attended in person or online, joined by observers from Australia, Canada and Japan. Civil society was clearly present, with reports from ANEC, Equinet, ETUC, ForHumanity and Small Business Standards.

DG CONNECT announced that a slightly updated standardisation request supporting the AI Act was being prepared. It noted that most provisions of the Act would apply by mid-2026 and some a year later, reminded participants how short the deadlines were, and urged the working groups to concentrate on producing usable harmonised standards. The chair and the convenors stressed the volume of work required and the need for new experts to join. Given the size of the AI community in CEN-CENELEC member countries, they argued, competent people should not be hard to find.

The plenary launched a series of new projects. New work item proposals covered the direct adoption of the ISO/IEC 5259 series on data quality for analytics and machine learning, an AI conformity assessment framework, a quality management system for regulatory purposes, evaluation methods for accurate computer vision systems, a taxonomy of computer vision tasks, cybersecurity specifications for AI systems, and a taxonomy of AI system methods and capabilities. Preliminary work items covered guidelines and metrics for the environmental impact of AI, tools for handling ethical aspects across the AI lifecycle, and upskilling on AI ethics and social concerns in organisations.

Participants noted an overall acceleration in risk management, conformity assessment and quality management (WG2), data management and logging (WG3), trustworthiness (WG4), and cybersecurity (WG5). After Bath, two international standards were proposed for adoption as European standards: ISO/IEC 25059 (quality model for AI systems) and ISO/IEC 12792 (transparency taxonomy of AI systems). The next plenary was scheduled for Turin, 4–6 November 2024.

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 42

In SC 42 WG1, two standards were close to adoption: AI system impact assessment, and requirements for bodies auditing and certifying AI systems. Work had begun on a standard for the reliability of AI systems. In WG3, the standards on bias and transparency were close to adoption, and a standard on logging was in full development. The SC 42 secretary had shared the SC 42 standards published between February 2023 and June 2024 with JTC 21, making them available to its members.

More forums

Equinet held meetings in 2024 on the gender impact of AI (11 April) and on practical and ethical issues in the use of AI in communication (29–30 May), with a webinar series on AI and gender equality planned for September.

At CPDP in Brussels on 23 May, ANEC brought together the Commission, JTC 21, ETUC and Small Business Standards to assess inclusiveness in AI standardisation. The panel agreed that barriers to participation remain, and that more action, funding and training are needed for consumers and civil society to be properly represented. ANEC also presented its inclusiveness work under projects funded by the Mercator Foundation and the European AI & Society Fund. A recording is available.

On 5 June, Small Business Standards and CEN-CENELEC co-organised the High-Level Forum workshop on national participation in standardisation, with support from the Belgian FPS Economy. Government representatives, national standards bodies and practitioners from SMEs, large companies, consumer and environmental organisations, trade unions and academia discussed access, participation and good practice.

On 19 June, ANEC and BEUC held a virtual workshop on maximising civil society participation in AI standardisation, supported by the Mercator Foundation. More than 40 civil society participants heard an update from Antoine-Alexandre André of the AI Office and practical advice from Emilia Tantar, chair of JTC 21 WG2 and Small Business Standards representative, before discussing barriers and routes to engagement in breakout groups. CEN-CENELEC followed with a webinar on 27 June on involving societal stakeholders and SMEs in standards development, with presentations and a recording available online.

Nice to know, useful to read

The issue recommended the Future of Life Institute's biweekly EU AI Act Newsletter, then with 26,000 subscribers, and a paper by Christian Grafenauer of ANEC on protecting consumer rights through the AI Act and JTC 21 standards.

It also noted three national developments on AI at work. In Spain, the main employers' organisations (CEOE and CEPYME) and the two largest trade unions (CCOO and UGT) concluded the binding 5th Agreement for Employment and Collective Bargaining, with a substantial section on human control of AI and the right to information about algorithms. In Italy, a government bill on AI, including two articles on AI in the workplace, was heading to Parliament. In Poland, a bill submitted on 11 June would extend the information employers must give trade unions on request, including the parameters of algorithms used to make decisions about employees, for example in profiling.

My reading

The Bath plenary marks the point where the programme's ambition and its capacity started to pull apart. The Commission asked for usable harmonised standards on a short deadline, while the plenary opened a long list of new work items and the leadership appealed for more experts. The acceleration reported at the time did not prevent the original April 2025 delivery deadline from being missed, which later led to CEN-CENELEC's exceptional measures and, indirectly, to the Digital Omnibus delay.

The workplace items point to a parallel track. Rights to information about algorithms and human control over AI at work are being set through collective agreements and national legislation, not through standards. For providers and deployers this means two sources of obligations that need to be read together: the technical requirements in harmonised standards, and the information and control rights negotiated or legislated at national level.

For the live status of each standard, see the Standards Explorer.

Since then (status September 2026)

Stages for the prEN drafts are drawn from public trackers and commentary as of mid-2026. Verify against the live CEN-CENELEC work programme before relying on them. No JTC 21 deliverable gives a presumption of conformity until its reference is cited in the Official Journal.

Correction, 15 September 2026: an earlier version of this table described prEN 18229 as a three-part series. It has been updated to reflect the current five-part structure.