The EA Multilateral Agreement Council (MAC) held its 51st meeting on 23 October 2024 in Brussels, Belgium. 54 participants from 38 National Accreditation Bodies (NABs) and the representative of the EA Advisory Board attended the EA MAC meeting.

Sergio Guzzi (ACCREDIA, the Italian NAB) was elected as the new MAC Vice Chair for a two years mandate, starting January 2025.

The MAC expressed its appreciation to MAC Vice Chair Karine Vincent (COFRAC, the French NAB) for her outstanding contribution to the MAC serving as MAC Management Group (MG) member and MAC Vice Chair.

During this meeting, the MAC, which manages the peer-evaluation process and decides on the EA MLA signatory status of the National Accreditation Bodies (NABs), made the following decisions:

  • NAH, the Hungarian NAB, remains an EA MLA signatory in the field of persons certification (EN ISO/IEC 17024).
    The next full re-evaluation shall take place in June 2026 (considering the standard 4 years intervals from the initial evaluation).
  • NAAU, the Ukrainian NAB, is requested due to the current situation of war in Ukraine to provide a progress report to the MAC to decide on the planning of the next peer evaluation.
  • COFRAC (the French NAB), DAkkS (the German NAB), ESYD (the Greek NAB), ACCREDIA (the Italian NAB), RvA (The Netherlander NAB), IPAC (the Portuguese NA) and SWEDAC (the Swedish NAB) are exempted from undergoing a new peer evaluation in the field of carbon dioxide emissions from maritime transport in accordance with the MAC Implementation Plan of the Art. 61 of the Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2023/2917 pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2015/757, approved by the MAC in April 2024.
    The exemption is valid for all NABs mentioned above until 23rd October 2027.

The MAC approves the preparation of a new document EA-2/02 S6 (G) – Guidance on file review during a peer evaluation process.

The MAC endorses the MAC MG proposal to include specific items (cross border accreditation, development of accreditation schemes and use of accreditation marks) as focus points during the next 4 years for all the peer evaluations starting January 2025. The outcome of the evaluations will be further reviewed by the MAC MG for each peer evaluation.

The MAC received with appreciation the report presented by the EA Advisory Board.

The next MAC meeting will take place on 7-8 May 2025, in Tbilisi, Georgia.