According to European Directive 98/34/EC of 22 June 1998 a “standard” is a technical specification approved by a recognised standardization body for repeated or continuous application, with which compliance is not compulsory and which is one of the following:

• international standard (ISO)
• European standard (EN)
• national standard (UNI).

Standards are therefore documents that define the characteristics (dimensional, performance, environmental, safety, organizational, etc.) of a product, process, or service, in accordance with the state of the art, and they are the result of input received from thousands of experts working in Italy and elsewhere in the world.

Standards have the following distinctive characteristics:

• consensuality: they must be approved with the consensus of the participants in the works of preparation and confirmed by the result of a public enquiry;
• democracy: all the interested economic/social parties can participate in the works and, above all, the opportunity to make observations during the procedure prior to final approval is offered to all;
• transparency: UNI specifies the basic milestones of the approval procedure for a draft standard, placing the draft documents at the disposal of the interested parties for consultation;
• voluntary nature: standards are a source of reference that the interested parties agree to apply freely on a non-compulsory basis.