The EA Multilateral Agreement Council (MAC) has held its 52nd meeting on 7-8 May 2025 in Tbilisi, Georgia. Sixty-two participants from 37 National Accreditation Bodies (NABs) and the representative of the EA Advisory Board attended the EA MAC meeting.

During this meeting, the MAC expressed its appreciation to MAC members for whom this was their last participation in the MAC meetings after many years:

  • Rolf Straub (SAS, the Swiss NAB) for his outstanding contribution to the MAC serving as MAC Management Group (MG) member and EA Team Leader
  • Henk Deckers (RvA, Netherlands NAB) for his outstanding contribution to the MAC serving as MAC member and EA Team Leader.

 

The MAC congratulated Giorgi Chitadze (GAC, the Georgian NAB) on his election as a new member of the MAC MG. Reflecting on this opportunity, Giorgi shared the following:
From my perspective, it is a challenging role to be a part of the MG. The most important part for me is to work closely with very experienced and well-educated people. Participation in the MAC MG, bearing the highest value for personal growth and development, involves not only technical knowledge of accreditation processes, regulations, and standards, but also an exciting presentation of interpersonal skills and diplomacy. On the other hand, the MAC MG is a place where you can make an effort to establish and strengthen, so-called “Best Practice” in accreditation.

At this meeting, the MAC, which manages the peer-evaluation1 process and decides on the EA MLA signatory status of the NABs, took the following decision:

HAA, the National Accreditation Body of Croatia, remains an EA MLA signatory in the fields of calibration laboratories (EN ISO/IEC 17025), testing laboratories (EN ISO/IEC 17025), including medical laboratories (EN ISO 15189), inspection bodies (EN ISO/IEC 17020), managements system certification bodies (EN ISO/IEC 17021-1), product certification bodies (EN ISO/IEC 17065), certification bodies of persons (EN ISO/IEC 17024) and validation and verification bodies (EN ISO/IEC 17029).

In the course of the meeting, the MAC decided to send out for voting to EA GA members the document EA-2/02 – EA Procedure for the evaluation of a National Accreditation Body, where the competence criteria for evaluators have been revised.

On the second day, the MAC members participated in a workshop whose purpose was to raise the awareness of the MAC members on the criteria for the appointment and composition of a Task Force Group (TFG), the role and the task of the TFG, and the preparation of the TFG report.

The main role of the MAC TFG is to evaluate the peer evaluation report on completeness and good understanding, to study the evaluation report and to make a recommendation on decision to the MAC . The workshop was organized into 8 groups whose task was to review the previously received made-up Peer Evaluation (PE) report based on the actual PE reports and prepare a MAC TFG report with recommendations for decision-making at the MAC level.

Exercises performed during the MAC workshop highlighted the review and preparation of the MAC TFG report by focusing on:

  • the technical aspects of the report/evaluation to ensure that the MAC can make a sound decision to study the peer evaluation report for completeness and good understanding to comment on the general impression of the performance of the evaluation team,
  • the reporting and the classification of findings, communication with the evaluation team, and, in exceptional cases, with the NAB under evaluation when there are open, missing, or unclear issues in the report to solve or clarify the situation.

At the end of the Workshop, representatives of 8 groups presented their prepared TFG reports with conclusions and recommendations for making a decision on EA MLA status. The outcome of the workshop, based on the conclusions of the group work and discussion, will be presented at the next MAC meeting.

The next MAC meeting will occur on 30 September – 1 October 2025, in Brussels, Belgium.

 

1 The peer-evaluation system guarantees that EA Members comply with Regulation (EC) No 765/2008 and the international requirements (standards, etc.). The objective is to ensure regulators, stakeholders, and the business community have confidence in the certificates and reports issued by accredited Conformity Assessment Bodies under the EA MLA.