This chapter provides an overview of the EU regulatory framework applicable to standardization. In particular, it covers the relationship between international, European, and national standardization bodies and the standards they produce. On the general level, it explains the EU’s New Approach policy for technical standardization, discusses the legal value of the European harmonized standards, and reviews the most recent case law of the European Court of Justice on standards’ role and value in the EU legal order. It also examines whether and when standards development organizations (SDOs) can breach EU competition law, namely, Articles 101 and 102 TFEU, by reviewing the relevant case law of the European Court of Justice and the Decisions of the European Commission. In particular, this chapter offers an in-depth analysis of the EU Regulation 1025/2010 and the Commissions’ Horizontal Guidelines, especially with regard to their applicability to ICT standards and ICT SDOs, focusing on the procedural requirements for these institutions to legitimize their standards and to limit or escape possible antitrust liability.

This chapter looks at the various institutions providing authority to standards as de jure or de facto regulatory instruments governing the internationalisation of services in contemporary capitalism. It provides background on the institutional environment of the WTO, the ISO setting, the European and the American systems, as well as on the prospects of the new generation of preferential trade agreements, such as the Canada–European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). It shows the intricate and manifold ways in which the ambiguity of the world of standards supports its power across institutional specificities. This not only goes against the view of a compelling transatlantic divide. It also calls for mitigating speculations on the prospects of current and future mega-trade agreements against the setbacks initiated by the Trump administration. With or without deals, the ambiguity on which the authority of standards feeds the regulatory environment of capitalism is here to stay.