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Technical Documentation

Much of PEFC's spectrum of activities is based on technical documentation outlining principles, criteria, and procedures.

All of these documents have been developed in multi-stakeholder process, and we are tremendously grateful for the expertise and knowledge that external parties have contributed to this work.

PEFC's technical documentation aims:

• to define clear and unambiguous provisions
• to be uniform of structure, of style and terminology to ensure homogeneity
• to be consistent within the complete corpus of the PEFC Council documentation.

To this end, PEFC adopted a new documentation structure  in 2008 to more clearly distinguish between:

• PEFC International Standards: Standards are documents, established by consensus and approved by a recognised body, that provide, for common and repeated use, rules, guidelines or characteristics for activities or their results, aimed at the achievement of the optimum degree or order in a given context. PEFC International Standards are adopted by the General Assembly.
• PEFC Guides: Guides are published by PEFC Council giving mandatory rules, orientation, advice, interpretation or recommendation relating to PEFC International Standards and/or other PEFC activities.

PEFC also makes available all endorsement-related documentation by national certification systems. This includes national standards as well as the complete assessment report.