The EA Multilateral Agreement Council (MAC) held its 55th meeting on 30 September in Roissy, France. 59 participants from 42 National Accreditation Bodies (NABs) attended the EA MAC meeting.
The MAC thanked Maria Papatzikou (ESYD, the Greek NAB) for her six years of service as Chair of the MAC and expressed its warm appreciation and farewell as she chaired her final meeting in this role.
Sergio Guzzi (ACCREDIA, the Italian NAB) was re-elected as Vice Chair of the MAC for the term 2027-2028.
At 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 Montenegrin National Accreditation Body, remains an EA MLA signatory 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), and Product Certification (EN ISO/IEC 17065);
- ARMNAB, the Armenian National Accreditation Body, becomes an EA MLA signatory in the fields of Calibration (EN ISO/IEC 17025), Testing (EN ISO/IEC 17025), and Certification of Management Systems (EN ISO/IEC 17021-1).
Launch of the EA MLA on biobanking
The Multilateral Agreement Council launched the EA MLA for the accreditation of Biobanks (EN ISO 20387) with the following signatories: ACCREDIA (Italy), EGAC (Egypt), NA (Norway), PCA (Poland), RvA (The Netherlands), and UKAS (United Kingdom).
Alignment with Global ACI documents
The MAC agreed with the revised versions of:
- EA-2/02 EA Procedure for the evaluation of a National Accreditation Body to align it with IAF/ILAC A2:2025 (Global ACI-MRA-005);
- EA-2/02 S3 EA-2/02 S3 – EA Procedure for the evaluation of a National Accreditation Body. Risk-based approach for the planning of a peer evaluation to align it with IAF/ILAC A2:2025 (Global ACI-MRA-005).
The documents will be sent to the MAC Members for voting.
The next MAC meeting will take place on 18 May 2027, in Tbilisi, Georgia.
1 The peer evaluation system guarantees that EA Members comply with the relevant requirements of Regulation (EC) No 765/2008, the international standard EN ISO/IEC 17011, and supplementary requirements set out in EA rules and EU legislations. 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.
