The New Governance of ICT Standards in Europe

In 2012, the ‘European Multi-Stakeholder Platform on ICT Standardization’ (MSP) was inaugurated as a new platform for dialogue on European ICT standardization. The MSP was comprised of a wide range of members, e.g., representatives of national authorities of EU member-states and European Free Trade Association countries; the European and international ICT standardization bodies and stakeholder organizations representing industry; small- and medium-sized enterprises, consumers, and other stakeholders. The MSP was set up by the European Commission as a new kind of collaborative forum in ICT standardization, partly in response to the otherwise consolidated and formalized European standardization system, which had a clear allocation of competences between exclusively selected public and private actors, yet also inefficiencies due to a rather bureaucratic governance system. This chapter outlines the creation of the MSP as a new ICT-enabled collaborative decision-making system in European ICT standardization. Not due to the application of new technologies, but due to the systemic consequences of the fast development of ICT for political, administrative and regulatory setups of collaboration in Europe. This chapter provides an analysis of the MSP as a new type of forum for deliberation and cooperation in European ICT standardization, and it outlines how the platform facilitates a regulatory dialogue on ICT standardization in Europe. Simultaneously, the MSP plays a significant role in public–private co-creation of regulation and ICT standardization, and it may prove to be a pathbreaker leading to a ‘paradigm shift’ in the governance of European standardization. Finally, certain implications of the MSP are discussed.