As announced at the last two EA General Assemblies, EA will celebrate its 15th anniversary in June 2015. Jumping at this special opportunity, the EA Executive Committee agreed on a communication campaign that emphasizes EA’s values, achievements and prospects.

[Picture: Thomas Facklam, the EA Chairman.]

The whole communication project, led by an EA 15th Anniversary Organization Committee, is involving EA Members, the EA Secretariat and NAT, the national accreditation body hosting the autumn 2015 EA General Assembly.
The culminating events will take place during this General Assembly meeting on 25-26 November 2015 in Budapest, Hungary. These include the distribution of a special anniversary leaflet and an entertainment program during the Gala dinner.

The World Accreditation Day on 9 June 2015 will also be a red-letter day when specific news will be published. Additional events kindly supported by ACCREDIA should celebrate EA’s 15th anniversary during the Joint IAF-ILAC Annual Meetings 2015 to be held on 28 October – 6 November 2015 in Milan, Italy.

In the meantime, the campaign will focus on publishing EA’s story and future ambitions in six episodes to be published every 2-3 months on the EA Homepage. Each of these six chapters will illustrate EA’s role towards a specific stakeholder group: key stakeholders will be briefly interviewed to give testimonies on how far EA has come in meeting their expectations. The EA Secretariat is responsible for drafting proposals to be reviewed by an ad hoc editorial group.

How is EA today?

As a framework prelude to the next episodes dedicated to stakeholders, Thomas Facklam, the EA Chairman, kindly answered the following three questions to give us an overall picture of EA’s current performance and due improvements:

EA shall coordinate and lead the European accreditation infrastructure to allow the results of conformity assessment services in one country to be accepted by Regulators and the market place in another country without further examination, for the benefit of the European community and the global economy. As the EA Chairman since January 2013, are you satisfied with the role played by EA since 2000? What is the most important achievement?

Some decades ago, conformity assessment activities, which aim at providing greater confidence and assurance that any products and services delivered to market are fulfilling the required quality criteria, were carried out by the buying/using organization or by a third-party conformity assessment body (CAB). This resulted in CABs undertaking conformity assessments for a number of different clients, each of which would need to assure itself of the CAB’s competence. This replication of effort, and cost, led to the idea of delegating assessment of CABs’ competence to independent third-party bodies fully competent to assess CABs – accreditation was invented.

As conformity assessment results are used throughout Europe and the world, accreditation bodies needed to define a level playing field for conformity assessment, i.e. to set up harmonized requirements for CABs including the application of accreditation criteria. The unification of the European accreditation system in 1997 and the registration of EA as a legal entity in 2000 have been milestones in the development of the European and worldwide accreditation system.

EA further developed with two main missions serving both its member accreditation bodies and the direct/indirect users of accreditation:
1. developing a set of mandatory and informative documents (including those provided at the international level by ILAC* and IAF**) to define a level playing field for accreditation and conformity assessment; and
2. applying a stringent peer-evaluation system to ensure that all EA Members are competent and comply with the relevant standards as well as EA and ILAC/IAF documents.

In 2008, the European accreditation system underwent significant change with the adoption of European Regulation (EC) 765/2008: accreditation became an activity in the public interest which could only be carried out by a single national accreditation body per EU Member State. This provided additional tasks in the regulated field for EA, and gave accreditation a formal status in relation to regulators’ acceptance of conformity assessment results provided by accredited CABs.

In 2010, EA also changed from an organization relying entirely on contributions from its members towards an association with its own personnel dedicated to supporting members’ activities.

EA’s development during the last 15 years can be seen as a positive straight forward improvement of the European accreditation system, although not always as efficient and fast as one might wish; our membership organization has its own internal rules which sometimes cause longer decision routes than may be desirable. In short, the way EA has developed over the past 15 years has been a good basis upon which to build for the future.

* the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation
** the International Accreditation Forum

What should be improved in the future to further develop accreditation in Europe?

EA should now concentrate on the following three objectives:

1. define EA Members’ self-understanding of what accreditation should deliver. The questions are: what basis should accreditation have, and how far should harmonization go to ensure that accreditation and accredited conformity assessments provide comparable and acceptable results?

2. more efficient participation in the development of international mandatory and informative documents, as well as cooperating with stakeholders (regulators, industry, CABs and end-users) to establish EA internal mandatory and informative documents to ensure wide acceptance of accreditation and accredited conformity assessment.

3. enhance the EA peer-evaluation system so that peer-evaluations can be planned and carried out under clearly-agreed contractual arrangements with EA Members, in order to ensure that the obligations arising from EA’s contract with the European Commission (EC) are not jeopardized by a lack of volunteers. This includes, among other things, compensating peer-evaluators’ costs while maintaining the “peer” characteristic.

How do you imagine EA within another 15-year timespan?

EA should remain a member organization with a strong support by the EA Secretariat.

EA should be the body that develops the (requirement) documents needed for continually maintaining a level playing field for conformity assessment and accreditation in cooperation with stakeholders, the international arena and other relevant regions.

EA should be the matter-of-course partner of the EC in any issue related to conformity assessment and accreditation.

EA should take care that accreditation remains the tool that ensures CABs’ competence without being converted into an advertising gimmick which could restrict accreditation in serving the society.

EA should have an internal organizational structure consisting of EA’s staff as well as peer-evaluators provided case-by-case by EA Members and financially supported to carry out the peer-evaluations as needed.