The EA Multilateral Agreement (MLA) Council has just held its 46th meeting remotely on 6-7 April 2022. 66 participants attended the EA MAC meeting, including one EA Advisory Board representative and members from 48 National Accreditation Bodies (NABs).
The MAC gave a warm welcome to two representatives of NAAU, the National Accreditation Body of Ukraine. NAAU informed the MAC that they have resumed with their accreditation activities as far as possible despite the ongoing horrible war. The EA President expressed again the full EA support to NAAU.
Click here to read EA’s statement on the war in Ukraine.
During this meeting, the MAC – which manages the peer-evaluation process and decides on the EA MLA signatory status of the NABs – took the followings decisions:
EGAC, the National Accreditation Body of Egypt, remains an EA MLA signatory in the field of Proficiency Testing Providers (ISO/IEC 17043).
The MAC reconfirmed the EA MLA signatory status of NAAU, the National Accreditation Body of Ukraine. in the fields of Calibration (ISO/IEC 17025), Testing (ISO/IEC 17025), including Medical Examinations (ISO 15189), Inspection (ISO/IEC 17020), Certification of persons (ISO/IEC 17024), Certification of products (ISO/IEC 17065), and Certification of management systems (ISO/IEC 17021-1).
Following the war situation in Ukraine, the MAC decided that the peer evaluation of NAAU, initially planned in September 2022 is on-hold. MAC will consider the evolution of the situation in Ukraine during the next MAC meeting at the latest.
Roadmap towards to a single EA MLA for validation and verification according to EN ISO/IEC 17029
EA decided in November 2019 to extend the EA MLA under “Validation and Verification” to include EN ISO/IEC 17029:2019 Conformity assessment — General principles and requirements for validation and verification bodies besides the EN ISO 14065:2013 Greenhouse gases — Requirements for greenhouse gas validation and verification bodies for use in accreditation or other forms of recognition since EN ISO/IEC 17029:2019 expands the scope of EN ISO/IEC 14065 which only covers the accreditation of Greenhouse Gas Verification Bodies.
In order to reach this objective, the MAC has approved the d Road Map towards an EA MLA according to EN ISO/IEC 17029 and the Transition Plan to EN ISO/IEC 17029:2019 + EN ISO 14065:2020, which are describing the actions to be taken, such as training of the peer evaluators and decision-makers and the steps to be taken for the transition process.
Workshop on ISO/IEC 17029
The MAC organized a workshop on ISO/IEC 17029 for the training of its members in order to ensure in future sounds decisions on the MLA signatories status in relation to this standard. The workshop was carried out by Nathalie Saveant (COFRAC, the National Accreditation Body from France).
The next meeting will be on 5-6 October 2022 in Torino, Italy.