UNI – Ente Italiano di Normazione is the Italian Standardization body, a private, non-profit association, founded in 1921 to develop, approve and publish standards in all economic sectors (industry, trade and services) excluding electric and electrotechnical ones. UNI defines and develops voluntary standards in relation to various kinds of products, materials, services and processes paying attention to the environmental, economic and social sustainability.

UNI is the official Italian member of CEN (European Committee for Standardization) and ISO (International Standard organisation) as acknowledged by the EU Reg. N. 1025/2012 and the Italian law D.L 223 of 15/12/2017.

The standardization activity is carried out by technical committees to which representatives of all subjects in the concerned supply chain are invited to participate. The process is designed to guarantee specific standards’ underpinnings: consensus, democracy, transparency, voluntariness. It is for these characteristics that standardization can bridge the gap in economic and social sectors without any reference laws, while easing the regulation framework. At European level, the use of harmonized technical standards represents presumption of conformity to the essential safety requirements of products with CE marking allowing their free circulation on the internal market.

Moreover, in order to contribute to broadcast technical knowledge, UNI carries out also customized education activities, organizing trainings, webinars, events, …

In line with CEN “Integrated Approach” strategy, UNI promotes standardisation as a tool to bridge the gap between the innovation and the market, boosting knowledge transfer, coordination and confront among all actors in the supply chain, while integrating from the beginning standardization in R&I projects.

In particular, UNI Innovation and Development department actively participates to international and national R&I projects and elaborates “Prassi di Riferimento” (UNI/PdR): voluntary, bottom up pre-normative standardization documents available free of charge aiming at codifying innovative market and technology best practices as basis for future standards. In parallel, the Innovation and Development Department contributes also to CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA) at EU level, documents designed to meet a market need where an innovative technology has not reached a sufficient degree of stability for the development of a European Standard. Always to boost innovation through standardization, in the last years UNI Innovation and Development Department has also been involved as partner in several European projects.