Over the past 2 years EA has had the pleasure to cooperate with ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) in the development of a new standard for the conformity assessment of TSPs.

EA input was through a small task force from the EA Certification Committee (CC), with representatives from COFRAC (France), SWEDAC (Sweden) and UKAS (UK), whose role was to advise ETSI on the conformity assessment aspects. The standard EN 319 403 was published in September 2015.

The ETSI scheme provides one route for TSPs to demonstrate conformity with relevant requirements of the eIDAS Regulation (Regulation (EU) N°910/2014 on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market) through assessment by accredited CABs, with the accreditation based on ISO/IEC 17065. The EACC has produced migration document, adopted by the EA General Assembly, covering the process for migration from other national schemes. The migration document is designed “to allow existing local and national arrangements to continue while a structured migration takes place to achieve compliance with the requirements of EN 319 403”.

The publication of this standard follows a very cooperative working arrangement between EA and ETSI which we hope will continue for any future schemes.