The EA Multilateral Agreement (MLA) Council has just met for its 38th meeting in Bucharest
(Romania) on the 4th and 5th October 2017. This meeting was the occasion to welcome 2 new signatories with ALGERAC and MOLDAC.

The EA Multilateral Agreement Council (MAC) which manages the peer-evaluation process and decides on MLA signatories, held its biannual meeting in October, during which the following decisions have been made.

Andreas Hönnerscheid (DAkkS, the German NAB), Bostjan Godec (SA, the Slovenian NAB) and An Van Den Bergh (BELAC, the Belgium NAB) were elected as members of the MAC Management Group.

ALGERAC, the national accreditation body of Algeria, becomes an EA BLA signatory in the field of Testing, Calibration and Inspection.

MOLDAC, the national accreditation body of the Republic of Moldova, becomes an EA BLA signatory in the field of Testing (including medical examinations according to ISO 15189), calibration, inspection, product certification and management systems certification.

LA, the national accreditation body of Lithuania, remains an EA-MLA signatory in the fields of calibration, testing, inspection, product certification, management systems certification and certification of persons. It also becomes an EA MLA signatory in the field of Medical Examinations according to ISO 15189.

BELAC, the national accreditation body of Belgium, becomes a signatory of the EA MLA for the accreditation of Proficiency Testing Providers (EN ISO/IEC 17043).

RENAR, the national accreditation body of Romania and SWEDAC, the national accreditation body of Sweden, remain EA-MLA signatories in the fields of calibration, testing (including medical examinations according to ISO 15189), inspection, product certification, management systems certification, certification of persons and GHG Validation and Verification. They also become signatories of the EA MLA for the accreditation of Proficiency Testing Providers (EN ISO/IEC 17043).

AA, the national accreditation body of Austria, remains an EA-MLA signatory status in the fields of Testing (including medical examinations according to ISO 15189), calibration, inspection, product certification, persons certification, management systems certification and validation and verification.

All these decisions are effective from the 5th October 2017.

The next Council meeting will be hosted by ATS, the national accreditation body of Serbia, in April 2018.

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 (http://www.european-accreditation.org/the-mla).