Before 2012, public administrations could only directly reference national , European and international standards when procuring ICT solutions. In order to allow the EU to respond to the fast evolution of technology in ICT, while also ensuring competition, promoting interoperability and innovation, the European Commission has developed a flexible approach to standardisation.
The European Commission can identify ICT technical specifications that are not national, European, or international standards, provided they meet precise requirements. Once identified and approved, these specifications can then be referenced in European public procurement. [Read more about the identification process].
Below you can find the list of all technical specifications identified so far.
| Specification | Standardisation body | European Commission identifying decision |
| ISO/IEC 19845:2015 - Information technology – Universal business language version 2.1 (UBL v2.1) | OASIS | 2014/771 |
| IETF | 2014/188 | |
| Lightweight Directory Access Protocol version 3 (‘LDAPv3’) | IETF | 2014/188 |
| Domain Name System Security Extensions (‘DNSSEC’) | IETF | 2014/188 |
| DomainKeys Identified Mail Signatures (‘DKIM’) | IETF | 2014/188 |
| ECMAScript-402 Internationalisation Specification (‘ECMA-402’) | ECMA | 2014/188 |
| Extensible Markup Language version 1.0 (‘W3C XML’) | W3C | 2014/188 |
| IHE XCPD: Cross-Community Patient Discovery; | IHE | 2015/1302 |
| IHE XCA: Cross-Community Access; | IHE | 2015/1302 |
| IHE XCF: Cross-Community Fetch; | IHE | 2015/1302 |
| IHE XDR: Cross-Enterprise Document Reliable Interchange; | IHE | 2015/1302 |
| IHE CT: Consistent Time; | IHE | 2015/1302 |
| IHE ATNA: Audit Trail and Node Authentication; | IHE | 2015/1302 |
| IHE BPPC: Basic Patient Privacy Consents; | IHE | 2015/1302 |
| IHE XUA: Cross-Enterprise User Assertion; | IHE | 2015/1302 |
| IHE PRE: Pharmacy Prescription; | IHE | 2015/1302 |
| IHE DIS: Pharmacy Dispense; | IHE | 2015/1302 |
| IHE XPHR: Exchange of Personal Health Record Content; | IHE | 2015/1302 |
| IHE XD-MS: Cross-Enterprise Sharing of Medical Summaries Integration Profile; | IHE | 2015/1302 |
| IHE XD-SD: Cross-Enterprise Sharing of Scanned Documents; | IHE | 2015/1302 |
| IHE PIX: Patient Identifier Cross-Referencing; | IHE | 2015/1302 |
| IHE PDQ: Patient Demographics Query; | IHE | 2015/1302 |
| IHE XDS.b: Cross-Enterprise Document Sharing; | IHE | 2015/1302 |
| IHE XDS-I.b: Cross-Enterprise Document Sharing for Imaging; | IHE | 2015/1302 |
| IHE XD-LAB: Laboratory Reports; | IHE | 2015/1302 |
| IHE XDM: Cross-Enterprise Document Media Interchange; | IHE | 2015/1302 |
| IHE SVS: Sharing Value Sets; | IHE | 2015/1302 |
| IHE SWF: Radiology Scheduled Workflow; | IHE | 2015/1302 |
| IHE SWF.b: Radiology Scheduled Workflow; | IHE | 2015/1302 |
| IHE PIR: Patient Information Reconciliation; | IHE | 2015/1302 |
| IHE PAM: Patient Administration Management; | IHE | 2015/1302 |
| IHE LTW: Laboratory Testing Workflow; | IHE | 2015/1302 |
| IHE LCSD: Laboratory Code Sets Distribution; | IHE | 2015/1302 |
| IHE LWA: Laboratory Analytical Workflow. | IHE | 2015/1302 |
| eXtensible Business Reporting Language version 2.1 (XBRL 2.1) | 2016/120 | |
| World Customs Organization Data Model version 3.5 (‘WCO Data Model version 3.5’) | OASIS | 2016/1765 |
| Content Management Interoperability Services version 1.0 (‘CMIS 1.0’) | OASIS | 2016/1765 |
| Content Management Interoperability Services version 1.1 (‘CMIS 1.1’) | OASIS | 2016/1765 |
| Business Document Metadata Service Location Version 1.0 (‘BDX location’) | OASIS | 2016/1765 |
| ‘Electronic business XML Messaging Services Version 3.0: Part 1, Core Features’ and ‘Application Statement 4 Profile of ebMS 3.0 Version 1.0’ (‘ebMS3.0-AS4’) | OASIS | 2016/1765 |
| Electronic business Core Party Identification Type Technical Specification Version 1.0 (‘ebCorePartyIdType’) | OASIS | 2016/1765 |
| Transmission Control Protocol/Internet protocol (TCP/IP) | IETF | 2017/168 |
| User Datagram Protocol (UDP) | IETF | 2017/168 |
| Domain Name System (DNS) | IETF | 2017/168 |
| Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) | IETF | 2017/168 |
| Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) | IETF | 2017/168 |
| Security Architecture for the internet Protocol (IPsec) | IETF | 2017/168 |
| Network Time Protocol (NTP) | IETF | 2017/168 |
| Secure Shell-2 Protocol (SSH-2) | IETF | 2017/168 |
| Transport Layer Security Protocol (TLS) | IETF | 2017/168 |
| Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure Certificate and Certificate Revocation List (CRL) Profile (PKIX) | IETF | 2017/168 |
| Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) | IETF | 2017/168 |
| Upgrading to TLS Within HTTP/1.1 (HTTPS) | IETF | 2017/168 |
| Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI) | IETF | 2017/168 |
| Uniform Resource Locator (URL) | IETF | 2017/168 |
| Uniform Resource Names (URN) | IETF | 2017/168 |
| File Transfer Protocol (FTP) | IETF | 2017/168 |
| 8-bit Unicode Transformation Format (UTF-8) | IETF | 2017/168 |
| Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) | IETF | 2017/168 |
| Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) | IETF | 2017/168 |
| Post Office Protocol — version 3 (POP3) | IETF | 2017/168 |
|
Multipurpose internet Mail Extensions (MIME) |
IETF | 2017/168 |
| Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) | IETF | 2017/168 |
| Internet Calendaring and Scheduling Core Object Specification (iCalendar) | IETF | 2017/168 |
| File format standard for electronic business cardS (vCard) | IETF | 2017/168 |
| Common Format and MIME Type for Comma-Separated Values (CSV) | IETF | 2017/168 |
| Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) | IETF | 2017/168 |
| Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) | IETF | 2017/168 |
| RDF 1.0 | W3C | 2017/5055 |
| RDF 1.1 | W3C | 2017/5055 |
| SMP 1.0 | OASIS | 2017/5055 |
| AS2 (RFC 4130) - MIME-Based Secure Peer-to-Peer Business Data Interchange Using HTTP Applicability Statement 2 (AS2) | IETF | 2017/5055 |
| RFC 3987 - Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs) | IETF | 2017/5055 |
| Data Foundation & Terminology Model | RDA | 2017/5055 |
| PID Information Types API | RDA | 2017/5055 |
| Data Type Registries Model | RDA | 2017/5055 |
| Practical Policies Recommendations | RDA | 2017/5055 |