ARCHIVED: Revised Horizontal Guidelines were published in the Official Journal on 21 July 2023. This Practice Note was written with the previous Horizontal Guidelines in mind. It is not maintained. Instead, for up to date content, please see the relevant section in Practice Note: Analysing horizontal co-operation agreements under EU competition law.

Standardisation (or standard-setting) is a common practice and plays an important role in many industries and society more broadly—bringing about clear benefits by, for example, encouraging innovation, ensuring product quality and safety, permitting and facilitating interoperability/compatibility and reducing transaction costs.

Agreements on standards have as their main objective the definition of technical or quality requirements with which current or future production processes, methods or products must comply, for example to ensure compatibility between products that work together. Standardisation agreements can cover various issues such as standardisation of different grades or sizes of a particular product or technical specifications in markets where compatibility with other products or systems is required or essential. An example would be