The EA Multilateral Agreement Council (MAC) has just held its 49^th meeting on the 4^th and 5^th of October 2023 in Brussels, Belgium. 60 participants from 41 National Accreditation Bodies (NABs) and the representative of the EA Advisory Board attended the EA MAC meeting.

During this meeting, the MAC – which manages the peer-evaluation¹ process and decides on the EA MLA signatory status of the NABs – took the following decisions:

ATCG, the National Accreditation Body of Montenegro, is recognized as a new EA MLA signatory in the fields of testing (EN ISO/IEC 17025), including medical examination (EN ISO 15189), calibration (EN ISO/IEC 17025), inspection (EN ISO/IEC 17020), and Product Certification (EN ISO/IEC 17065).
The next re-evaluation of ATCG shall take place in two years, in November 2024

NAH, the National Accreditation Body of Hungary, remains signatory status in the fields of Calibration (EN ISO/IEC 17025), Testing (EN ISO/IEC 17025) including Medical Examinations (EN ISO 15189), Inspection (EN ISO/IEC 17020), Proficiency Testing, Providers (EN ISO/IEC 17043), Certification of Management Systems (EN ISO/IEC 17021-1), Certification of Products (EN ISO/IEC 17065), Certification of Persons (EN ISO/IEC 17024), Validation and Verification (EN ISO 14065 and EN ISO/IEC 17029).

Furthermore, NAH shall provide a progress report regarding the implementation of corrective actions to several findings raised during the peer evaluation.

Revision of the document EA-2/02
During the meeting, the EA MAC decided to revise the document EA-2/02 EA Procedure for the evaluation of a National Accreditation Body regarding the competence criteria for evaluators. This action follows the outcome of the comments received from the members for the paper within the frame of the reengineering of the EA peer-evaluation process project, based on the approved New Work Item Proposal of 13 October 2020.

MAC Management Group
The MAC Management Group (MG) is responsible for effectively managing and harmonizing the peer evaluations and operations of the MAC, including meetings and comprising 12 members.

Following the recent elections held by the MAC for the MAC MG membership, starting 1^st of January 2024 the MAC MG will be composed of representatives from the following NABs: AA (Austria), ACCREDIA (Italy), BELAC (Belgium), CAI (Czech Republic), COFRAC (France), DAkkS (Germany), ESYD (Greece), NA (Norway), NAB-MALTA (Malta), SAS (Switzerland), SWEDAC (Sweden), and UKAS (United Kingdom).

¹ The peer-evaluation system guarantees that EA Members are compliant with Regulation (EC) No 765/2008 and the international requirements (standards, etc.). The objective is to ensure that regulators, stakeholders, and the business community have confidence in the certificates and reports issued by accredited Conformity Assessment Bodies under the EA MLA.

The document EA-INF/03 Signatories to the EA Multilateral Agreement has been updated.