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Vincent Laflèche has been re-elected for a second term as president of CEN, the European body responsible for coordinating the creation of voluntary standards in all fields except electrotechnology. He has also been a Mines ParisTech director since October 2016.
Brexit, new approach, innovation, IT
Four main issues will punctuate its mandate, from 1erJanuary 2020 to December 21, 2021. In addition to managing the consequences of the Brexit, Vincent Laflèche will focus on preserving the New Approach system, a mechanism that has been in place since 1985 to cultivate a better complementarity of roles between European directives, which set essential requirements for placing products on the market, and voluntary standards, developed by standards bodies, which propose ways to achieve these objectives. An approach for which Afnor is actively campaigning in France.
The third challenge of Vincent Laflèche's mandate will be to follow up on the innovation, research and standardization plan, the preparation of which he coordinated and which was approved at the same CEN General Assembly. Finally, he will work to further facilitate the involvement of experts (companies, administrations, consumer associations, federations, etc.) by promoting the use of common IT systems shared by the national standards bodies, ISO, IEC and CEN-CENELEC.
Vincent Laflèche's background
A graduate of the École Polytechnique and the École des Mines de Paris in 1987, Vincent Laflèche began his career at the Ministry of the Environment, where he worked for six years, three of which as Director of the Pollution and Risk Prevention Department. For the next 5 years, he was Managing Director and then Director of the environmental consulting firm ECOBILAN Italia.
From 2003 to 2013, Vincent Laflèche was Deputy Director General and then Director General of the French National Institute for the Industrial Environment and Risks (INERIS). At the same time, he became involved in the French standardization system as chairman of the "risk assessment" standardization committee (2006-2007), then as a member of the AFNOR board of directors (2012-2013). In 2011, he also became chairman of AFNOR's "environment and social responsibility" strategic committee. This structure is in charge of the standardization strategy within its scope as well as the coordination of the work of some 100 French standardization committees.
From 2013 to September 2016, Vincent Laflèche was President and CEO of the French national geological survey, BRGM (Bureau de recherches géologiques et minières). He was elected president of CEN in the summer of 2015 and then became president-elect in 2016. He is also Director of Mines ParisTech since October 2016.
CEN in brief
Created in 1961, CEN has 34 members, including the national standards bodies of the 28 countries of the European Union, the European Free Trade Association (EFTA, which includes Iceland, Norway and Switzerland) and two EU candidate countries (Turkey and Macedonia). France is the second largest contributor to the CEN.
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