EA Certification Committee members participated in the 35th meeting on 14-15 March 2018 in Windsor, UK, hosted by UKAS, the British national accreditation body (NAB).

65 participants including representatives from 42 NABs and 7 stakeholders organisations (DVGW CERT GmbH, EFAC, EFECTIS France, EWF, FAMI-QS, IIOC and PEFC Council) were gathered to discuss various subjects such as:

EA Strategy 2025 and the “One Voice Concept”: CC members agreed to have advanced and proactive discussions regarding the draft of IAF documents and how to elaborate and express an EA consensual opinion on the international arena.

Revision of EA-2/17 EA Document on Accreditation for Notification Purposes : to follow the decision of the EA HHC to revise EA-2/17 to consider how to better implement the document, the EACC decided that the HHC revision should be fed into by EACC since the “preferred standard” and “One + 1”
approaches are much targeted at certification (ISO/IEC 17065 versus ISO/IEC 17021, for instance). As they are major users of the document, CC Members’ NABs have been encouraged to take part in revision of EA-2/17 and the EACC Chair has already been confirmed as a member of the HHC TFG for EA-2/17.

EACC FAQs: a new set of questions was also discussed and answered at the meeting; they will be inserted into the EACC FAQs published on the EA website at www.european-accreditation.org/faq

EACC Working Groups: updates were given by the conveners of the EACC WG Food (Wolfram Hartmann, DAkks – Germany), EACC WG ENVIRONMENT (Casper van Erp, RvA – The Netherlands) and EACC NG EU ETS (Peter Hissnauer, DAkkS – Germany).

GNB (Group of Notified Bodies) and CPR (Construction Products Regulation): Invited by the EACC Chair to attend the meeting, Yannick Le Tallec from Efectis, president of AG/GNB-CPR, presented the outcome of a survey on notification issues relating to CPR, answered by about 60 Notified Bodies established in 16 Member States. Accreditation has been made mandatory in 15 out of these 16 countries. CC Members were invited to send any comment or question to Chair, who will forward them to Yannick Le Tallec and also will discuss them with the HHC Chair.

Certification for the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation): As GDPR raises many issues relating to NABs’ reporting, the EA CC Chair would discuss with the EA Executive Committee whether to consider improving the legibility of the subject through EA guidelines or legal advice on GDPR implementation.

Possible TFG (or WG) on information security and data protection certification standards: Most CC Members show very strong support for having a new EACC WG that covers IT and Data Security standards and legislation (ISO 20000; ISO 27000; GDPR certification; eIDAS certification (including ETSI), etc.). Because setting up a WG is a formal process to be adopted by the EA General Assembly, CC agreed to develop the idea fully before putting forward a proposal, and to establish a small TFG to explore the issue further and develop draft Terms of Reference, work programme and other related documents. A call for nominations for TFG convener and members will be in progress until 30 April 2018 and conclusions of the TFG will be discussed at the next EACC meeting to ensure there is still support for the WG idea.

Representation on Standards Committees: The CC Chair encouraged NABs to attend standards committees in order to contribute to work, learn and influence as appropriate. He proposed to draft some EA-wide survey through which NABs would inform of their contribution to standardisation work.

ISO/IEC 17029 Conformity Assessment — General requirements for bodies performing validation and verification activities: the new ISO 17029 is being drafted by CASCO WG 46 with the aim to
provide validation and verification as a whole at IAF MLA Level 3. This item will be followed up at the next CC meeting in September.

ISO/IEC 17011:2017 Conformity assessment — Requirements for accreditation bodies accrediting conformity assessment bodies: CC agreed to discuss at the next meeting the possibility given by ISO/IEC 17011:2017 for defining flexible scopes in certification.

This 2-days meeting was also the occasion to discuss the following items through EACC strategic workshops:

Guidance document for selection of Conformity Assessment standards: a document has been drafted by the TFG (RvA, UKAS, PEFC Council) convened by Casper van Erp (RvA, The Netherlands) and sent out for CC comments by 30 May 2018.

Harmonisation of Management System Certification Scoping: Steve Randall (UKAS, UK) will convene the TFG whose membership was confirmed at the meeting. Three resolutions will be submitted to the EA General Assembly in May 2018 for adoption:

– EACC Work Programme 2019

– Further to publication of IAF MD 22 in January 2018, withdrawal of EA-3/13 M:2016 – EA Document on the Application of ISO/IEC 17021-1 for the Certification of Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems (OH&SMS), taken over by IAF MD 22:2018 – Application of ISO/IEC 17021-1 for the Certification of Page 2 of 39 Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems (OH&SMS).

– Adoption by EA as mandatory documents for all EA Members of:
IAF MD21: 21 – Requirements for the Migration to ISO 45001:2018 from OHSAS 18001:2007
IAF MD22: 2018 – Application of ISO/IEC 17021-1 for the Certification of Page 3 of 39 Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems (OH&SMS)
IAF MD1 (issue 2): 2018 – IAF Mandatory Document for the Audit and Certification of a Management System Operated by a Multi-Site Organization

The next CC meeting will take place on 11-12 September 2018 in Warsaw and will be hosted by PCA (Poland).