The annual EURAS Conferences bring together academics from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds, representatives from national and regional standards bodies, and government agencies, and company representatives. They all share an interest in standardisation research and education. The papers presented at EURAS conferences address a broad variety of issues relating to standards and the underlying standardisation process. These include, among many others, standardisation policies, the economics of standardisation, participatory, legal and regulartory issues, as well as the history and the future of standards and standardisation. The theme of the EURAS 2026 conference was ‘Values in Standards’. Standards significantly contribute to the resilience of the EU’s Single Market as well as its competitiveness in global markets. Regarding the former, they support e.g. the EU’s New Industrial Strategy and the Green Deal. With respect to the latter, standards are key instruments for the dissemination of the EU’s core values and thus represent a unique selling point in global standardisation. This is all the more important as the geopolitical landscape in global standards setting has significantly changed in recent years. This has also been recognised by the recent EU Standardisation Strategy, which calls for a more strategic European approach to international standardisation activities. Beyond the goals of propagating and safeguarding European core values in the international standardisation arena, a human-centred and inclusive development of standards —also taking into account ethical considerations —would benefit society at large at the global level. This holds specifically for standards for emerging technologies like Al and smart systems, which will have unprecedented societal ramifications.
