The EA Certification Committee held its 26th meetings on 1 and 2 October 2013 in Madrid, Spain. As usual, the second meeting day, called the “full meeting”, gathered stakeholder organizations such as CEOC International, EFAC, EFNDT, EUROLAB, FAMI-QS, PEFC Council and IIOC; about 60 delegates participated in the full meeting.

Revision of EACC FAQs

The first meeting day, usually fully dedicated to the preparatory meeting with EA-member ABs, was this time partially open to stakeholder organizations to approve and finalize the answers given by the EACC with regard to the previous questions asked by CC members and the revision of EACC FAQs.

The comprehensive updating work of EACC FAQs, i.e. the “frequently asked questions” raised by CC Members and answered at the successive CC preparatory meetings, is nearing completion within the CC Review Panel in cooperation with stakeholders.

The objectives are not only to revisit the FAQs when standards are revised themselves, but also to synthetize the FAQ format and improve legibility and transparency for a wider use and publication. The revision of FAQs on ISO/IEC 17021 and 17024 should come to an end by spring 2014.

Management of the EACC

In October 2013, CC members discussed how to adapt the CC management to reflect the expansion of its structure and responsibilities covering 3 standards. The operation of the CC can no more heavily rely on a single person, i.e. the Chair.

Building upon the experience of other EA committees, it was agreed that:
– a vice-chair should assist the Chair in managing the CC, including replacing him when necessary.
– a management group should assume the responsibility for the whole CC. As an enlargement of the current EACC Agenda Panel, this management group (MG) will involve more persons, i.e. the Chair, the Vice-Chair, the conveners of the CC working groups and the coordinator of the Review Panel. The objectives are twofold: assist the Chair in making decisions, especially when setting up the meeting agendas together with the Secretariat; and improve bidirectional communication between the CC and its working groups as well as the Review Panel. The MG could also be open to other persons responsible for specific tasks on a rotating system.

The CC Chair, Leopoldo Cortez from the Portuguese NAB (IPAC), was mandated to amend accordingly the EACC Rules of Procedure, which have been first endorsed by the Executive Committee and then approved by the General Assembly in November 2013.

An EACC vice-chair will be elected at the next meeting in March 2014.

Environmental issues still highly focussed

The initially called EACC working group for accreditation of greenhouse gas verifiers (or WG GHG), now more formally entitled the EA EU ETS Network Group, still convened by Niels-Christian Dalstrup from the Danish NAB (DANAK), was set up within the CC in October 2011 to meet the European Commission (EC)’s expectation to have a formal network established between EA-member ABs so as to improve European harmonization of accreditation in the field of greenhouse gas emissions. The WG GHG members met twice on 7 May 2013 in Paris, France, and on 24 September 2013 in Milan, Italy.
The EA EU ETS Network Group membership has just been completed at the end of November 2013: it now covers all the 35 EA Full Members which will be kept fully informed of the EU ETS verification issues and requirements. The membership list will have to be presented to the EC.

The Accreditation & Verification (A&V) and Monitoring & Reporting (M&R) Regulations were published on 12 July 2012; both are applied from 1 January 2013. The accreditation scheme based on ISO 14065 is mandatory, and the EA MLA now includes accreditation of GHG verifiers as a new activity.

A specific agreement for an EC action grant supporting the work undertaken in relation to the implementation of the EU ETS regulations has been signed by EA in August 2013.

As part of this implementation work, the revision of EA-6/03: EA Document for Recognition of Verifiers under the EU ETS Directive by a small dedicated task force of the WG GHG was finalized after receiving parallel comments from both the CC membership and the EA community. In October, the EACC agreed to send out the revised document for EA ballot, which was closed on 18 November 2013. This mandatory document has been adopted within EA. It will support a harmonised interpretation and approach to the accreditation of verification bodies according to ISO 14065 and the A&V Regulation. It is to be used by accreditation and verification bodies in the process of accreditation for verification of emissions and data in the EU ETS (Emissions Trading System) scheme.

Besides, upon Niels-Christian Dalstrup’s recommendation, the EACC put forward a resolution, which has been adopted by the EA General Assembly in November 2013, stating that the transition from EN ISO 14065:2012 (ISO 14065:2007) to EN ISO 14065:2013 (ISO 14065:2013) can be made on an administrative basis. It was further noted that according to the Commission communication 2013/C 258/05 (list of harmonized standards), the presumption of conformity with the previous version ended on 31 October 2013.

The EACC also agreed that, due to the numerous similarities with GHG issues, the maritime transport CO2 emissions topic should be included in the work of the EACC WG GHG rather than in the EACC WG Environment. The relevant EC regulation is expected to be finalized by mid of 2014.

Actually further discussions took place in October with regard to the distribution of GHG/14065 subjects between the Environment and GHG WGs. The EACC concluded that it would be more efficient that the WG GHG / EU ETS Network Group can expand to similar regulated areas in order to beneficiate from the competencies acquired with the A&V Regulation. Voluntary areas and non- regulatory schemes would remain on the scope of WG Environment.
The EACC WG Environment, convened by Casper van Erp from the Dutch NAB (RvA), agreed to modify their terms of reference (ToR) accordingly when they met for the second time on 28-29 October 2013 in Vilnius, Lithuania. The ToR of the EA EU ETS Network Group have also been adjusted in this direction. The ToR of both WGs will be submitted to the EA Executive Committee for endorsement in January
2014.

Work items on progress

A first revision of EA-6/02: EA Guidelines on the Use of EN 45011 and ISO/IEC 17021 for certification to EN ISO 3834 building upon the outcome of a workshop jointly organized by EA and the European Welding Foundation (EWF) in December 2010, was being progressed within an equally EA-EWF composed TFG convened by Kevin Belson from the UK NAB (UKAS) until summer 2013, when the revised document was adopted as an EA document.
In order to carefully review the implications of new ISO/IEC 17065 rather than just changing references from EN 45011 to ISO/IEC 17065, the CC had also agreed to revisit the document in late 2013 or early 2014 once experience is gained with new versions of EA-6/02 and ISO/IEC 17065.
The EA General Assembly in November 2013 approved the new work item submitted by the EACC in October with the aim of further revising EA-6/02 in order to align it with ISO/IEC 17065. It was also resolved to withdraw the current version of EA-6/02 in the day after the transition period from EN 45011 to ISO/IEC 17065 has finished (16 September 2015).

The elaboration of a mandatory guidance document on witnessing practices for management system certification has been progressing through several online meetings. Because it proved difficult to find compromises between very large discrepancies, a cluster approach has been privileged by the TFG convened by Leopoldo Cortez. The CC welcomed the harmonisation purpose of the document which was circulated for comments within the CC by early 2013.
In March 2013, the CC discussed the preferred table of clusters for EMS and QMS, on which the document intends to focus for now. A second, more consensual draft elaborated on in light of the comments received and the instructions agreed at the March meeting, was presented at the CC meeting in October.
After the October meeting, the CC Chair was alerted that IAF had agreed to start a parallel drafting. Consulted by email, CC Members have agreed in early November 2013 that EA’s drafting of the witnessing document should be merged with IAF’s drafting and, consequently, that a modified version of the CC document is elaborated on to take into account the comments provided at the corresponding IAF meeting. The new version should be fine-tuned in time for the next CC meeting in March 2014 so as to give EA members the opportunity for a quick informal feedback before a revised proposal is forwarded to the IAF TF mid-term meeting in April 2014.

Approved by the EA General Assembly in November 2011, the drafting of an EA harmonization guidance on the application of ISO/IEC 17021:2011 for OHSAS 18001 has been progressing within a CC TFG. After national regulations referring to OHSAS 18001 were put forward to the TFG, a first draft document was discussed in March 2013. In October 2013, further to similar developments in ISO where ISO/PC 283 Occupational health and safety management systems – Requirements was created and a future ISO/IEC 17021-x Requirements for third party certification auditing of occupational health and safety management systems standard are under development, the CC agreed that the 2011-mandated EA work should continue, focussig in priority on the scope for certification, the scope for accreditation, legal compliance and the man-day issue; auditors competence should be left to ISO for them to deal with it.

In 2013, the CC has also been tackling with a new certification scheme for trust service providers. As electronic signatures are to be subject to a new European regulation, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) is developing a new certification scheme, which was presented at the CC meeting in October 2013. In March, the CC had previously agreed to set up a TFG convened by Kevin Belson (who has local contacts with ETSI in the UK) in order for EA to get involved as from the start of the development process of the ETSI regulatory certification scheme. CC members sent their comments on the ETSI scheme to the EA Secretariat in order for the EACC TFG to present them to ETSI by mid-November 2013.

Future trainings in the CC

Further to the 2-session training held in February 2013, the CC agreed in October to have a workshop / refresher training focussing on the implementation of ISO/IEC 17065 in mid-late 2014. The following months will be dedicated to set up the training with tutors and a host.

It was also agreed to wait until 2015 for organising a similar workshop on ISO/IEC 17024.

The next CC meetings will take place on 25 and 26 March 2014 in Oslo, Norway.