Standards play a crucial role to build transparency and trust, and in organising the security continuum between public and private actors. They establish harmonised quality levels on the quality of services, which allow companies to enter the market and respond to client expectations. They complement existing regulation on private security services in EU Member States, if needed – most importantly in fields where stricter self-regulation by industry is of added value.

Catherine Piana, Director General of CoESS, highlighted that ISO and CEN standards were key to promote the provision and procurement of quality security services. Especially the European CEN Technical Committee (TC) 439 on Private Security Services, which is chaired by Catherine Piana, manages and maintains targeted quality norms in aviation and maritime security and is currently developing an overarching standard for Critical Infrastructure.

Still, Catherine Piana stressed that if companies invest money to adhere to certain standards, the latter must be of added value and tailored to the environment they operate in. Standards, both on international and national level, need to be established based on a very clear need and objective.

Participants agreed that to increase the uptake of standards by companies, their strategic value needs to be further promoted – a mission that CoESS takes very seriously.