The establishment of an ISO committee for sustainable event management and other topics is a decisive step towards the development of international standards that systematically take into account the ecological, social and economic aspects of events. China in particular is actively using international standardisation to strengthen its economic and technological position. The country is bringing standardisation secretariats into its own country and is strongly promoting the development of technical standards. The secretariat of the planned new technical committee is to be based at the French standardisation organisation AFNOR and the secretariat of the first subcommittee dealing specifically with sustainability in event management is to be based at the British standardisation organisation BSI in the UK. This is to be welcomed, because in order to remain competitive, Europe must assert its role as a standard setter and actively participate in standardisation processes.
At ISO, trade fairs and events have so far been the subject of a working group within the Technical Committee for Tourism. AUMA participates in the meetings of this working group on behalf of the German Institute for Standardisation (DIN) and looks forward to being able to contribute its expertise to the new Technical Committee for the International Events Industry via DIN in the future.
