German tech industries see standards as strategic infrastructure

Editorial note: This article is based on press release 2026-053 issued by VDE Verband der Elektrotechnik Elektronik Informationstechnik e.V. on 3 November 2026 (press contact: Matthias Schmidt-Stein; responsible under press law: Regina Schnathmann, Head of Brand, Marketing and Communication). The German original was translated by the LED professional editors; its section structure has been kept.

Competitiveness does not come from company-internal standards and special solutions, but from helping to shape common international rules. This applies all the more to industries with a significant share of electrical engineering, as a first-ever special analysis of the German Standardization Panel shows.

(Berlin/Hamburg/Frankfurt am Main, 3 November 2026) For companies in electrical engineering, IT, energy and automotive in particular, international and European norms and standards are an important part of their strategic infrastructure. This is shown by a special analysis of the German Standardization Panel (Deutsches Normungspanel) published on the occasion of the IEC General Meeting 2026, which takes place in Hamburg in November.

Companies in these sectors attach significantly greater importance to European and international standards than the rest of the respondents. At the same time, they rate them as more important than national or company-internal standards.

Michael Teigeler, Managing Director International at DKE (Image: Sarah Kastner / VDE)

"The results reveal a particular structural characteristic of technology-intensive industries. They often operate in global markets and in complex value chains."
— Michael Teigeler, Managing Director International at DKE

As a result, interoperability, regulatory alignment and market access depend heavily on shared technical specifications that enable compatibility between products, systems and across national borders.

"For them, internationally recognised standards act not only as a technical reference, but also as strategic enablers of innovation, trade and productivity growth."
— Michael Teigeler, Managing Director International at DKE

Interoperability, the ability of different systems to work together, is one of the strongest arguments for standardization. The special analysis shows that respondents from the sectors concerned rate its importance significantly higher than the sample as a whole. For many of them, international electrotechnical standards are the foundation of interoperable systems. Examples can be found in smart grids, industrial automation and connected mobility.

4,000 experts at the IEC General Meeting

Prof. Dr. Knut Blind, Professor of Innovation Economics at Technische Universität Berlin (Image: Christian Kielmann)

"In technology-driven industries, the benefits of standards are particularly evident. They help companies turn innovations into marketable products faster while ensuring compatibility and safety. Standards are the core of the quality infrastructure. They are the bridge between innovation and market acceptance and help organizations bring new technologies to market faster while ensuring compatibility, safety and reliability."
— Prof. Dr. Knut Blind, Professor of Innovation Economics at Technische Universität Berlin and responsible for the German Standardization Panel

Electrotechnical standards, for which the VDE-backed DKE is responsible in Germany, are developed at international level within the IEC. Once a year, up to 4,000 experts from the international standardization community gather for the IEC General Meeting, this year in November at the Hamburg exhibition halls. While the meeting itself is a closed event, a supporting programme is designed to bring electrotechnical standardization closer to the interested public. More information is available on the IEC General Meeting 2026 website.

"Standardization, as the results impressively show, is a key mechanism for coordinating innovation and promoting the diffusion of technology in globally networked industries. The technology-intensive industries examined demonstrate particularly clearly how standardization contributes to economic performance: it creates the foundations for scalable and interoperable markets."
— Michael Teigeler, Managing Director International at DKE

About the German Standardization Panel

For the German Standardization Panel, researchers at Technische Universität Berlin, currently led by Dr. Luzie Bettina Kromer, have surveyed companies every year since 2012 on the importance of norms and standards. The project is supported by the German Institute for Standardization (DIN e. V.) and the German Commission for Electrical, Electronic & Information Technologies (DKE) under the patronage of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. To date, the German Standardization Panel has incorporated data from more than 8,000 companies, including more than half of the DAX 40 corporations as well as many small and medium-sized enterprises. For the present analysis, a special sample of respondents from the electrical engineering, IT, energy and automotive sectors was drawn and compared with the overall sample over the entire duration of the German Standardization Panel to date.

Further information and the complete results are available at www.normungspanel.de.

About DKE

DKE, the German Commission for Electrical, Electronic & Information Technologies, is backed by VDE and is the platform for around 10,000 experts from industry, science and public administration who develop norms, standards and safety specifications for electrical engineering, electronics and information technology. Standards support global trade and serve, among other things, the safety, interoperability and functionality of products and installations. As the centre of competence for electrotechnical standardization, DKE represents the interests of German industry in European (CENELEC, ETSI) and international standards organizations (IEC). In addition, DKE provides extensive services related to standardization and the VDE body of regulations. More information at www.dke.de.

Source: VDE press release 2026-053 „Normung als strategische Infrastruktur: Technologiebranchen betonen Wichtigkeit internationaler Standards", 3 November 2026 – PDF and web page. The complete findings are published in English in the DKE special publication International Standards as Strategic Infrastructure (PDF).