Chapter 12. International trade, standards and regulations Learning objective

11. What are the technical regulations, standards and rules on the definitions from 
the different sources? 
Recall some terms. According to the international ISO/IEC Guide 2:2004 
“Standardization and related activities -- General vocabulary” 

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«regulation - document providing binding legislative rules, that is adopted by an 
authority»; 
«technical regulation - regulation that provides technical requirements, either directly 
or by referring to or incorporating the content of a standard, technical specification or code of 
practice»; 
«standard- document, established by consensus and approved by a recognized body, 
that provides, for common and repeated use, rules, guidelines or characteristics for activities 
or their results, aimed at the achievement of the optimum degree of order in a given 
context».(In this definition there is no statement that the standard is a document is exclusively 
voluntary application, so this term allows that the standards can be either voluntary or 
mandatory, depending on the decisions of the relevant national standardization systems in 
different countries); 
«code of practice - document that recommends practices or procedures for the design, 
manufacture, installation, maintenance or utilization of equipment, structures or products». 
In the annex 1 of the TBT Agreement to implement the objectives of the Agreement are 
given similar, but slightly different definitions:
«technical regulation - document which lays down product characteristics or their 
related processes and production methods, including the applicable administrative provisions, 
with which compliance is mandatory. It may also include or deal exclusively with 
terminology, symbols, packaging, marking or labelling requirements as they apply to a 
product, process or production method». 
«standard - document approved by a recognized body, that provides, for common and 
repeated use, rules, guidelines or characteristics for products or related processes and 
production methods, with which compliance is not mandatory. It may also include or deal 
exclusively with terminology, symbols, packaging, marking or labelling requirements as they 
apply to a product, process or production method». It can be seen immediately obvious 
difference from the above given definition of a standard - the standards applied for the 
purposes of technical regulation can be only purely voluntary.