Refresher Training for Team Members authorized for Product certification and Inspection was held on the 6th and 7th of June 2023.  30 participants from 20 National Accreditation Bodies (NABs) participated in the training led by Philippe Cassan (COFRAC, the French NAB), Steve Randall (UKAS, the UK NAB), and Daniela Ionescu, the EA MAC Secretary.

General topics related to the peer-evaluation process were covered, including the outcome of the application review, criteria for selection of team members, witnessing, decision-making process, latest MAC Decisions, documents related to the peer evaluation process, revision of EA-2/02 EA Procedure for the evaluation of a National Accreditation Body following the completion of the re-engineering project, and MS Teams under EA One Drive – the platform used for peer evaluations.

Lively discussions resulted from the topics selected by the trainers: document review, selection of witnessing and file reviews, coverage of the accreditation scope, findings closing of the non-conformities, competence criteria for assessors, assessment of new schemes, implementation of the preferred standard in respect of EA-2/17 EA Document on Accreditation for Notification purposes.

For EA-2/17, the emphasis was on Annex A, which identify the harmonised standard, which is preferred for each legislation and each module, and on Annex B which includes the additional requirements taken from other harmonised standard, which are needed to underpin the standard for an appropriate assessment of the competence and performance under each module.​ Specific examples were discussed to prepare the evaluators for the on-site evaluation.

The breakout sessions allowed the evaluators to share their experience and understanding in smaller groups concerning the competence criteria, findings, accreditation scope including flexible scopes, and assessment of independence/impartiality criteria. This coming together enabled harmonized understanding to be developed with respect to these topics, thus providing improvement to the peer evaluation process.