scope:

Introduction

"Barriers to trade" is an emotive subject that polarises opinion amongst regulators and manufacturers alike.

For regulators, there are those who believe in setting minimum performance targets but allowing manufacturers the freedom on how these are achieved, and those who believe that the level of control, through legislation, should be very high and prescriptive to afford maximum protection to health and the environment.

Amongst manufacturing industry, views are influenced partly by national custom (and legislative background) and also by size of the enterprise - the latter, however, is not a consistent measure. Broadly, there are three groups from manufacturing whose opinions can be summarised as follows:

- those who believe that almost every piece of national legislation, and every measure and control applied to products is a barrier to them trading that product on the market;

- those who take their responsibilities for meeting legislation very seriously and fulfil their obligations under the legislation as the law demands or as they perceive society or the market demands for their product; 

- those who support strong controls, high standards and levels of certification, not just to fulfil their responsibilities as they understand them but also to protect the product image (and performance) and to protect the market from cheap imports or cost cutting.

The original report on Barriers to Trade, prepared in response to Mandate M/366 given to CEN/TC 351 by the European Commission, and published as CEN/TR 15855 [1], identified that some of these barriers were truly technical or legal "barriers to trade" which can usually be overcome or minimised by technical harmonisation work. However, others were found to be quite legally in place, sometimes voluntary, but nonetheless still seen as a barrier to the use of certain products in a free market place.