EA Members participated in the EA Spring Technical Committees meetings.
Laboratory Committee (LC)
Laboratory Committee Members met on 29-30 March 2023 in Ankara, Turkey. Sergio Guzzi (ACCREDIA, Italy) chaired the LC meeting for the first time, with Maarten Aerts (NA, Norway), elected as the new LC Vice-Chair for two years (2023-2024, aligned with the Chair’s mandate).
A workshop on flexible scopes for Proficiency Testing providers will take place on the morning of the first day of the LC September 2023 meeting (6 September 2023).
The LC will also schedule for early 2024 a Train-the-Trainer course on the new EN ISO/IEC 17043, expected to be published in June 2023.
Sergio Guzzi chaired its first LC meeting:
“It was an incredible experience, from one side with very high pressure due to responsibilities and concentration needed to follow all the discussions, from another side the feeling of being honored of the special role assigned as Chair of the TC, serving the accreditation community with the best I can do.
But I am lucky because I have a special team of people supporting me: my Vice-Chair, all the members of the MG, and the Secretariat! And most importantly, this huge amount of work could not be achieved without the work of all the LC Members, who are always cooperating actively and in a positive way.
I would say that we act as a community and not as a uniform group. Each of us is contributing with his/her particular point of view in the spirit of cooperation and harmonization, in peace.”
Horizontal Harmonization Committee (HHC)
HHC Members met on the 8-9th March in Brussels, Belgium.
HHC decides to publish on the EA website HHC FAQs https://european-accreditation.org/information-center/ea-faq/horizontal-harmonizationcommittee/
HHC decides to have a workshop on the EA-1/22(EA Procedure and Criteria for the Evaluation of Conformity Assessment Schemes by EA Accreditation Body Members) process at the next HHC September meeting (13-14 September 2023).
HHC confirms that the revised SERMI scheme (as well as the ERA IOD scheme) can be used for accreditation (as approved by the Technical Management Board in February 2023). Nevertheless, HHC strongly recommends NABs to grant accreditation only after the EA General Assembly approval of the mandatory application of the revised schemes- expected in May 2023. HHC also recommends NABs to inform applicants that the approval of the EA General Assembly is still pending. In addition, HHC expresses the need to have a clear procedure for these EC schemes not based on legislation under EA TFG evaluation. TMB is asked to address this issue.
Inspection Committee (IC)
Inspection Committee Members met on 21 March 2023 in Utrecht, The Netherlands.
ERA, the European Union Agency for Railways, will elaborate an assessment scheme for Assessment Bodies under the Common Safety Methods, and EA will support ERA in this mission. The scheme is to be drafted in 2023, finalized by the end of 2024, and ready for application in January 2026.
Marek Wilgos chaired its first Inspection Committee meeting:
“Undoubtedly, it was a big challenge for me, both substantively and organizationally. I have been attending EA IC meetings since 2015 and therefore had the opportunity to observe the performance of meetings by my predecessors. Added to this are the expectations of the meeting participants, who represent different accreditation bodies with different business needs in the scope of inspection activity and issues to be resolved.
As a goal, I set myself the task of combining the best practices I have experienced over the past few years observing the performance of previous meetings, but additionally adding the aspect of something new, which, after two years of organizing meetings online, seemed particularly relevant to me.
After the first meeting, one can conclude that the task of chairing the EA IC meeting, however not easy, and despite the newcomers’ dilemmas that occurred, provides a high level of satisfaction with a job well done.”
Certification Committee (CC)
Certification Committee Members met on 22-23 March 2023, in Utrecht, The Netherlands. They participated in a workshop on Risk-based assessment on the 2nd day of the CC meeting, and a new one will be organized in September 2023, dedicated to the relationships between product certification Bodies and Inspection Bodies.
On 5 January 2023, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CRSD) entered into force. This new directive modernizes and strengthens the rules concerning the social and environmental information that companies shall report. A broader set of large companies, as well as listed SMEs, will now be required to report on sustainability – approximately 50 000 companies in total.
A Task Force Group dedicated to CSRD issues within the Working Group Validation & Verification for contemplating and brainstorming purposes (training need, e.g.) will be established.
The CC approves the formal adoption by EA of IAF MD 7:2023 IAF Mandatory Document for the
Harmonization of Sanctions and Dealing with Fraudulent Behaviour and IAF MD 26:2023 Transition requirements for ISO/IEC 27001:2022, which have not been considered as being controversial or conflictual with EU rules.
Casper van Erp chaired his first Inspection Committee meeting:
“RvA had the honor of hosting the EA IC and the EA CC Spring meetings in Utrecht. Next to playing host, for me, this was the first meeting as EA CC Chair, with Wolfram Hartmann (DAkkS, the German NAB) and Frédérique Laudinet (EA Secretariat) at my side. The kick-off for the EA CC was with the joint dinner we held in downtown Utrecht. I had the opportunity to remind the audience of some of the environmental impacts of this type of meeting, such as the benefit of coming by train and the disadvantages of eating meat (I still hope everybody enjoyed their meals).
I loved meeting our EA colleagues in person again, got frustrated on failing to achieve One Voice on the topic of “withdrawal of certificates” due to the EA-2/17 implementation, and enjoyed shepherding the accreditors through Utrecht centre, and the legal framework tsunami coming our way and hope to see everybody again in Autumn in Brussels.”
Communications and Publications Committee (CPC)
CPC members met on 14-15 March in Riga, Latvia. An SEO presentation was organized to improve the content of the members’ websites, have a better ranking in Google, and promote the role of accreditation to the outside world. CPC Members participated in a communications crisis workshop and shared with their communications colleagues their local communications strategy.
It was the last meeting of the CPC in its historical format. The General Assembly will be invited to approve the Terms of Reference of the new Communications network, presented to the membership in November 2022 by the EA Vice President.
