BSi have released a statement regarding Brexit implications and objections to standards as follows:
Brexit and Implications for a Formal Objection
Question posed to BSI
From a procedural point, following Brexit (should that ever happen), how would the UK proceed with a formal objection / safeguard action. The reason I ask is that from our experience in PH/5 when CEN failed to take action on UK concerns raised against EN 353-1:2002 a safeguard action was taken up by UK Government through BIS (as it was) and UK HSE with the EU Commission.
Given the implications of Brexit how would this type of action be implemented in future?
Response from BSI
While the position with BSI membership of CEN and CENELEC is determined by us with our fellow members, and we have a plan to deal with this for the long term, the answer for formal objections depends on the Brexit outcome. Formal objections to standards are raised by Member States under the European standards regulation (1025/2012).
If the UK leaves the EU without a deal, Regulation 1025/2012 will no longer apply in the UK together with the facility offered by the article to submit a formal objection to the Commission – UK will be a third country with no right to intervene and would therefore not be able to object to the Commission’s citation of the standard. As part of its preparations for a ‘no deal’ scenario, the Government has drafted a number of statutory instruments covering the vast majority of harmonized standards to ensure regulatory continuity. On exit day, the Secretary of State will be able to designate standards, in much the same way that the Commission does in the Official Journal, for the purposes of regulatory compliance in the UK and at that point we expect the current list of harmonized standards applying to relevant EU regulations will be carried across identically into a UK publication. In this no deal scenario, the relevant SoS (Business Secretary for PPE), could - in very exceptional circumstances - decide not to designate a particular European standard which is heavily opposed by UK stakeholders. This would mean that, even though BSI would adopt the standard as part of its obligations as a CEN and CENELEC member, the standard in question would not carry a presumption of conformity for UK regulatory purposes. We do not yet know the precise way in which the SoS will designate standards, nor are we aware of any possibilities for objections to be raised by stakeholders – these detailed matters are all still to be worked out.
If the UK leaves the EU with the PM’s deal and the transition period she has negotiated, the UK will still be covered by the EU acquis and will still benefit from the provisions of Regulation 1025/2012 during that transition period. How formal objections will work in practice in such a scenario is still unclear, though we would expect that they would still be permissible from the UK. After the transition period, it would be for the details of any future agreement between the EU and UK to stipulate arrangements for the intervention of UK regulators in the citation of European harmonized standards.
If the UK leaves the EU with another, as yet unknown, deal, following anther outcome from the parliamentary process, then the provisions of that deal will apply including transition and longer term provisions.
