Forum for Technical Regulations

In order to exchange information and gather opinions on technical regulations, the National Board of Trade and different stakeholders meet in the Forum for Technical Regulations. We discuss the development in the technical rules area, both within the EU and globally.

Examples of issues that are being discussed:

• Potential regulatory barriers and existing technical barriers to trade – within Sweden, the EU and the WTO.
• Standards related to harmonised European legislation, including the importance of standards in trade with countries outside the EU.
• New regulatory challenges (such as product characteristics, production processes, digitalisation).
• Regulatory challenges on markets that are important for Sweden.
• International regulatory cooperation and lessons learned from trade-related technical assistance and capacity development.

The Forum for Technical Regulations meets three times per year and consists of representatives from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, government agencies, industry organisations, the Swedish standardisation bodies, NGO’s and companies.

The National Board of Trade has a central role in both the work for a well functioning internal market and in the work to prevent technical barriers to trade between the EU and third-party countries. We are the so-called TBT (technical barriers to trade) enquiry point for the WTO agreement on technical barriers to trade and participate in international standardisation and regulatory cooperation with the aim of preventing and abolishing non-tariff barriers to trade.