Yes but under specific conditions.
According to Regulation (EC) 765/2008 and EA-2/13 EA Cross-Border Accreditation Policy and Procedure for Cross-Border Cooperation between EA Members, each Accreditation Body should primarily provide services to its local market. However, in exceptional cases, an Accreditation Body may provide accreditation in a country or economy of another Accreditation Body. In such cases, the principle of the policy is to encourage cooperation between the foreign Accreditation Body and the local Accreditation Body, and to support local accreditation by offering the local Accreditation Body the opportunity to sub-contract, participate in a joint assessment or observe the assessment.
This lies in Article 7.1 of Regulation (EC) 765/2008 providing that Conformity Assessment Bodies, whether third-party or first-party/in-house bodies, are required to request accreditation by the National Accreditation Body of the Member State in which they are established.
This general rule allows for exceptions. The option for a Conformity Assessment Body to request accreditation with a NAB in another Member State is limited to cases where:
- there is no NAB in its own Member State [Art. 7.1(a)]
- the NAB does not offer the requested accreditation service [Art. 7.1(b)]
- the NAB has not received a positive outcome in the peer evaluation in relation to the conformity assessment activity for which accreditation is requested [Article 7.1(c)]
Art. 7.1 Regulation (EC) 765/2008 is a consequence of the non-competition principle embodied in Article 6 of the same Regulation. It is important to prevent Conformity Assessment Bodies from shopping around for accreditation certificates, thus creating a “market for accreditation” leading to the commercialization of accreditation which jeopardizes the added value and role of accreditation as a public authority activity and last level of control in the conformity assessment chain.