The President of the European Cooperation for Accreditation Visited Serbia

The Chairman of the European Cooperation for Accreditation (EA), Mr Lorenzo Thione, paid a three day visit to the Accreditation Board of Serbia. During his visit on Wednesday14th May Mr Thione participated in the round-table discussion entitled “Accreditation in Food Quality and Safety System”' at the 75th International Agriculture Fair in Novi Sad.

On the second day of his visit Mr Thione stayed at the head office of the Accreditation Board of Serbia where he talked with the Management of the ATS about politics of the EA,  IAF and ILAC, their mutual cooperation and current issues relating to harmonisation of accreditation process, certification and laboratory testing in the members thereof, and about the requirements for entering the EA Multilateral Agreement on the recognition of certificates and test results.

By transferring experiences in the implementation of the EA policy Mr Thione specially highlighted the EA cross-frontier policy and EA insistence that all certification activities in the territory of one country must be performed only in cooperation with and under accreditation scheme of a national accreditation body. According to him there are numerous reasons for this and one of them is the language barrier that is not so important since it can be overcome, but other reasons such as the factual knowledge of national legislative system and market of vital importance to the validity of accreditation results of certification bodies.
The Chairman of the European Cooperation for Accreditation gave a lecture to the ATS staff on the following current subjects with the EA: provision of metrology quality during the production process and service provision, increasing trust in management system certification – Report of the IAF Task Group for the ''re-engineering accreditation’’ and uncertainty  of measurement–aspects of uncertainty  of measurement, importance of result implementation when determining uncertainty  of measurement and accredited margins of uncertainty  of measurement.
While speaking about metrology quality provision Mr Thione emphasised the importance of identification of metrology needs by manufacturers and service providers, and the existence of “metrology culture” with the said manufacturers, testing laboratories, certification and accreditation bodies.
The other topic covered the importance of monitoring and assessment of work processes during assessment process at a location and during witnessing as regards quality system documentation (Quality Manual and procedures). Mr Thione said that, although it is necessary to monitor the very process during assessment procedure, the results of the process must be taken into consideration more often. 

It is his opinion and the stand of the EA that the most efficient penal measure for failing to observe the standard requirements should be suspension, i.e. accreditation withdrawal and/or certificate withdrawal (product or management system depending on the case), and that fining should also be considered.
After the lecture Lorenzo Thione had a discussion with his colleagues from the ATS and on that occasion he gave them very useful pieces of advice and answered a number of questions posed by his colleagues.
 

 
Lorenzo Thione gave three lectures to his colleagues from the ATS
 
Lorenzo Thione, Chairman of the European Cooperation for Accreditation

During discussion - Lorenzo Thione, Svetlana Golubović, Ljubinka Gligić, Dušanka Santovac – to the left, Dejan Krnjaić, Vida Živković, Milica Jovčić – to the right 
 
For remembrance