ETSI’s External Relations and Partnerships aim to expand ETSI’s outreach and strengthen its global impact, while safeguarding ETSI’s core principles and values.

Cooperation with International Standardisation Organisations

ETSI is well integrated in the international and European standards development ecosystem. At the international level, ETSI collaborates with the three International Standardisation Bodies:

With respect to the ITU, ETSI holds Sector Member status in all three sectors: Radiocommunications, Standardisation, and Development. 

ETSI and the ITU have also established a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).

ETSI benefits from a robust partnership by making its Technical Specifications and European standards transposed into ITU Recommendations or used as a technical foundation or the ITU work items. This effectively turns European deliverables into global references.

ITU Recommendations carry UN legitimacy and are widely adopted by governments, regulators, and public procurement bodies. Many non-European countries require ITU deliverables for the compliance and as prerequisite for market access.

With respect to the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), ETSI has a longstanding working relationship based on an agreement signed in 1995.

To date, the main areas of cooperation between the two organisations include but are not limited to: telecommunications and information exchange between systems; information security, cybersecurity, and privacy protection; coding of audio, visual, multimedia, and hypermedia information; automatic identification and data capture techniques; user interfaces; sustainability, IT, and data centres, and quantum technologies.

Only versions of ETSI liaisons with IEC, as well as ISO, can be found here:

ETSI’s relationship with the ISO and the IEC differs from that of other European Standardisation Organisations. ETSI is not subject to any dependencies or contractual requirement for formal and systematic alignment with these international standardisation organisations, which provides greater flexibility in promoting European standardisation deliverables at the international level.

ETSI Partnerships

ETSI holds a portfolio of 100+ partnership agreements with international and regional Standards Development Organisations and fora and consortia around the world.

The database of partnership agreements is available on ETSI portal: Partnership Portfolio.

Working in partnership with organizations worldwide is an integral part of ETSI’s strategy and day-to-day operations. Through its partnership portfolio, ETSI provides its members with practical mechanisms to coordinate standardisation activities with other standards bodies and relevant organisations.

These partnerships enable information exchange, technical coordination and, where appropriate, joint or aligned work, helping to ensure consistency between ETSI standards and those developed elsewhere. It helps to reduce duplication of effort, clarify responsibilities, and limit fragmentation caused by overlapping or competing standards, while supporting the increasing convergence of technologies.

At the same time, ETSI’s partnerships strengthen the technical impact of its work by facilitating progress in specific domains and supporting the global acceptance and implementation of ETSI standards. Collectively, partnership network is a key operational asset for reinforcing ETSI’s role and relevance in the global standardisation ecosystem.

Partnership engagement process

The partnership request is triggered and justified by:

  • ETSI TB or an ISG/SDG;
  • ETSI Director-General;
  • ETSI GA/BOARD, or
  • a potential Partner.

The request is processed by the Secretariat who initiates discussions with the potential Partner on the appropriate type of partnership engagement:

  • Letter of Intent (LoI)

    The LoI is a first step towards formalising contacts with a new partner. It is used to exchange promotional/operational information and identify common roadmaps.

  • Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)

    The MoU enables technical collaboration on identified common areas of mutual interest. Observers attend each other’s meetings in view of exchanging information. Unlike the LoI, the partner to an MoU needs to be a legal entity.

  • Cooperation Agreement (CA)

    The CA provides different ways of achieving specific technical needs.

    For a Cooperation Agreement to be possible, the partner must be a legal entity and its IPR policy must be compatible with ETSI’s IPR policy.

The Cooperation Agreement can be extended with:

    • Working Supplement (to produce joint deliverables or follow joint working procedures)
    • Materials Supplement (to incorporate text and graphics from one party’s published document into another party’s document)
    • PAS Supplement (to adopt the partner’s Publicly Available Specifications as ETSI Technical Reports (TRs) or ETSI Technical Specifications (TSs))

Contact our Policy Affairs team