The EA Multilateral Agreement (MLA) Council has just met for its 37th meeting in Sofia (Bulgaria) from 26th to 27th April 2017.
The EA Multilateral Agreement Council (MAC) which manages the peer-evaluation process and decides on MLA signatories, held his biannual meeting in April, during which the following decisions have been made:
– ESYD, the national accreditation body of Greece, remains an EA-MLA signatory status in the fields of testing including medical examinations according to ISO 15189, calibration, inspection, management systems, products certification, certification of persons and GHG verification.
– GAC, the national accreditation body of Georgia, becomes a BLA signatory in the fields of testing (excluding medical examinations according to ISO 15189), calibration, inspection, persons and products certification.
– DANAK (the national accreditation body of Denmark), COFRAC (the national accreditation body of France) and PCA (the national accreditation body of Poland) remain EA MLA signatories in the fields of calibration, testing (including medical examinations according to ISO 15189), inspection, products certification, management systems certification and certification of persons and GHG verification.
– FINAS (the national accreditation body of Finland), NA (the national accreditation body of Norway) and UKAS (the national accreditation body of United Kingdom) remain EA MLA signatories in the fields of calibration, testing, (including medical examinations to ISO 15189), inspection, products and persons certification, management systems certification and GHG verification.
– NAH (the national accreditation body of Hungary) becomes an MLA signatory in the field of inspection, after NAH was accepted as a signatory in the fields of calibration, testing (including medical examinations according to ISO 15189), products and persons certification, management systems certification and GHG verification
– TURKAK (the national accreditation body of Turkey) remains an EA MLA signatory in the fields of calibration, testing (including medical examinations according to ISO 15189), inspection, products certification, management systems certification and certification of persons.
– ACCREDIA, CAI, COFRAC, DANAK, ENAC, ESYD, FINAS, NA, PCA, RvA, TURKAK and UKAS become the first 12 signatories of the EA MLA for the accreditation of Proficiency Testing Providers (EN ISO/IEC 17043).
All these decisions will be effective from the 27th April 2017.
The next Council meeting will be organised by RENAR, the national accreditation body of Roumania, in September 2017 in Bucharest.
EA Multilateral Agreement (MLA)
The EA Multilateral Agreement (EA MLA) is a signed agreement between the EA Full Members whereby the signatories recognise and accept the equivalence of the accreditation systems operated by the signing members, and also the reliability of the conformity assessment results provided by conformity assessment bodies accredited by the signing members.
A Bilateral Agreement (BLA) between an EA Associate Member and EA has the same purpose and bilateral signatories to the EA MLA shall meet the same requirements as EA FULL Members.
Peer Evaluation Process
The strength of the EA MLA is maintained through a robust peer evaluation process. The main objective of the peer evaluation activities is to evaluate the on-going compliance of the national accreditation bodies to the internationally agreed requirements and to ensure that regulators, stakeholders and the business community can have confidence in certificates and reports issued by conformity assessment bodies under the EA MLA.
Further information about the EA Multilateral Agreement and the peer evaluation process is available on EA’s website : www.european-accreditation.org/the-mla.