16 September - National Standardization Celebration date

At the 15th regular session of the Association of Yugoslav Engineers and Architects, held on this day, 16 September, 1934 in Belgrade, the Yugoslav National Committee for Normalization was established (YNCN). It was a special institution, under the auspices of the former Ministry of Trade and Industry in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Since 1939, YNCN has become the first national body for standards, but its work was, unfortunately, interrupted by the outbreak of World War II. After the end of WWII, in the Federal People´s Republic of Yugoslavia (FPRY), in accordance with the Decree on standardization from 1946, the Federal Commission for Standardization was established, within the Federal Planning Commission of the FPRY Government. It, thus, became the new national body for standards in this area, and it retained that role until 1962.

From the middle of the last century until today, standardization activities were performed in several different institutions: the Yugoslav Institute for Standardization (1962-1978), the Federal Institute for Standardization (1978-2003), the Institution for Standardization (2003-2006) and finally, since 2006 until today, at the Institute for Standardization of Serbia (ISS).

Today, ISS is the institution whose founder is the Government of the Republic of Serbia. From the first published standards in 1952, (247 standards have been published that year), until today, we have more than 30 000 valid Serbian standards representing the adoptions of the International and European standards, but also one part of this number is dedicated to so called pure national standards that were developed by Serbian experts working in ISS NTCs. The commitment of all of us working in ISS is to enable all the standards necessary for the users to be available and, thus make it easier for Serbian manufacturers to place their products on any foreign market. Since standards development implies the active participation of experts from various fields in NTCs, who are, in fact, the true standards developers and creators, it is up to us to attract them to be involved in the standards development process, as well as to facilitate their active participation in the standardization at the International and European level.