• IEC has the primary responsibility in the development of the EMC standards
• IEC Standards adopted by CENELEC through a voting procedure
• When necessary CENELEC may develop the EMC standard by itself.
• The agreement between IEC and CENELEC is reciprocal

In order to avoid duplication of effort, improve speed and ensure coherence of European Standards and International Standards, a co-operation agreement was signed between IEC and CENELEC. The terms of the agreement define that the IEC has primary responsibility for the development of standards documents. These documents can be adopted by CENELEC, with appropriate modifications and published as the European Norm (EN) following a parallel voting procedure. In other words if CENELEC needs to develop a specific standard in the EMC field, they must ask the IEC to work on it.