Looking back on how 2016 was successfully managed, EA offers best wishes for an even more dynamic New Year 2017!
We are moving to the end of another most active year in EA, which welcomed the Hungarian national accreditation body (NAH) as a Full Member on 1 April 2016 and the national accreditation body of Armenia (ARMNAB) as an Associate Member on 24 November 2016. In October 2016, NAH signed the EA Multilateral Agreement for calibration, testing, verification as well as for management system,
product and person certification.
Besides 2016 saw EA reinforcing its relations with its stakeholders, especially with the International Federation of Inspection Agencies (IFIA) and the European Testing, Inspection and Certification System
(ETICS), with which EA signed a Recognized Stakeholder Agreement in May. A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was also signed with the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) in June. Moreover EA and the Standards Council of Canada (SCC) signed a bilateral cooperation agreement aimed to support the Canada and European Union (EU) Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA).
At the European level, EA successfully fulfilled its cooperation role with the European Railway Agency (ERA) to improve the consistent assessment of conformity assessment bodies (CABs) regarding the Interoperability Directive 2008/57/EC (IOD).
EA has completed its Accreditation for Notification (AfN) Project, aimed at increasing harmonisation between accreditation bodies when accrediting CABs for the purposes of Notification against EU Directives. The list of Preferred Harmonised Standards to be used by EA members as EA recommendation, which reflects a positive and constructive consensus, is now transferred into EA-2/17 M: 2016 – EA Document on Accreditation for Notification Purposes.
As far as the EA MLA is concerned, the EA peer-evaluations for accreditation in the field of proficiency testing providers (PTP) under ISO/IEC 17043 have been starting; the first decisions on signatures of the EA MLA for PTP accreditation are expected to be made by the EA Multilateral Agreement Council at its meeting in April 2017.
Finally, a new long-term EA Strategy setting the path for EA’s course “from good to great” has been finalized and adopted to be now implemented until 2025 in order to achieve EA’s vision based on governance, cooperation and innovation objectives.
EA warmly thanks all of its members and stakeholders for their most valuable cooperation and reliable support, which should be extended for further achievements in 2017.
Photo by Andreas Dengs, photofreaks.ws Pixelio.de