Legislation and standards

Governments use standards to integrate specific technical requirements into regulatory texts.

Standards in laws and regulations

Governments regularly include standards in their legislation. NBN maintains a handy overview of all Belgian laws that refer to standards.
Country map of Belgium and Europe following standards in Belgian legislation and harmonized standards.

Standards in legislation

Standards in Belgian legislation

As the knowledge centre for standardisation in Belgium, NBN regularly monitors and analyses standards that are referenced in regulations.

NBN publishes an overview of all regulatory texts published in the Belgian Official Gazette that refer to standards. This overview is regularly updated.

Disclaimer: the overview only gives direct references (dated or undated) and the hyperlink refers you to the page of the text in question in the Belgian Official Gazette. The oldest text goes back to 1997.

Standards in European legislation

The European Union also uses standards to support European policies. Among them are harmonised standards. These are European standards that a European standardisation body (CEN, CENELEC or ETSI) develops at the request of the European Commission. Through harmonised standards, you can prove that your products or services meet the technical requirements of the relevant EU legislation.

Example: the CE mark

You've certainly seen CE on toys, medical devices or electrical appliances. This CE mark indicates thatthe product meets high European safety, health and environmental requirements.

Want to know more about CE marking?

Standards and governments

As a policy maker, you often spend a lot of time determining technical requirements for new or updated regulations. There’s a more efficient way to do this! Using technical requirements from existing standards not only saves you time, but also ensures that the content has broad support.

On this page you'll find all the infomation you need, with handy tools to get started right away.