The European Committee for Standardization (CEN, French:Comité Européen de Normalisation) is a public standards organization whose mission is to foster the economy of the European Union (EU) in global trading, the welfare of European citizens and the environment by providing an efficient infrastructure to interested parties for the development, maintenance and distribution of coherent sets of standards and specifications.
The CEN was founded in 1961. Its thirty three national members work together to develop European Standards (ENs) in various sectors to build a European internal market for goods and services and to position Europe in the global economy. CEN is officially recognised as a European standards body by the European Union; the other official European standards bodies are the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI).
More than 60,000 technical experts as well as business federations, consumer and other societal interest organisations are involved in the CEN network that reaches over 460 million people. CEN is the officially recognized standardisation representative for sectors other than electrotechnical (CENELEC) and telecommunications (ETSI). On 12 February 1999 the European Parliament noted in a resolution that CEN, CENELEC and ETSI co-operate smoothly and that a merger of the three standardisaton bodies would not have clear advantages.