Explain to us the weight of European standards in our daily lives

The European Union decides on different standards which can have a concrete influence on our everyday lives when they are actually applied.

European standards can change our daily lives. This is the case, for example, with the universal charger. By the end of 2024, you will no longer spend long minutes looking for the right charger for your phone or tablet. There will now be just one universal charger that will work for all your devices, whether headsets, game consoles and soon even laptops. This is a standard that was voted on in 2022. With this measure, the European Union wants to help consumers save money, and also reduce electronic waste. “Duplicate” shippers still represent 11,000 tonnes of waste per year in the EU.

Another example of a European standard that is concretely changing our everyday lives, plastic straws and cutlery have disappeared from supermarket shelves in 2021. A measure decided in 2018. To preserve the environment, the EU will also ban cafes and restaurants, to serve food or drinks in a single-use plastic container.

Other types of standards have difficulty imposing themselves. The ban on glyphosate is one example. It is discussed again and again by EU member countries, but the use of this herbicide, recognized as a probable carcinogen by the WHO, is always renewed. At the end of 2023, the 27 were unable to agree on a ban or not. It was therefore the European Commission which made the decision and decided to authorize glyphosate in the EU for an additional 10 years. France did not wait for the EU and decided to ban the use of this herbicide by individuals and communities from 2019. But France, at the same time, abstained during the last European vote on glyphosate.

Certain measures are sometimes voted on, but they are not applied. This is the case with the time change. MPs validated it in 2019, with the aim of saving energy. However, in October 2024, you will have to set your watch to winter time. Due to the health crisis in 2020, then the war in Ukraine from 2022, the removal of the time change has not yet taken place. And in any case, European countries still do not agree on the definitive time to adopt.