19th meeting of the EA IS and EA SS

19th meeting of the EA Inspection Committee (EA IS) and 19th meeting of the EA Certification Committee (EA SS) were held in Istanbul, Turkey, in the period between 23rd and 25th February 2010, and they were organised by the Turkish Accreditation Body (TURKAK).

The work strategy of this Committee for the next period was discussed at the EA IS meeting at the initiative of the newly appointed Chairperson. After a constructive discussion the present participants agreed that the Committee should be directed to:

- revision of ISO/IEC 17020
- cooperation with the ILAC and IAF through JIG
- exchange of experience (in terms of harmonised application of requirements and cooperation between accreditation bodies)
- description of the scope of accreditation (including flexible scopes)
- role of inspection bodies as defined in the legislation and directives, i.e. their role as notified bodies
- new fields of inspection
- training of CAB personnel, etc.

Furthermore, there was a discussion about a need to put in place a guideline on the assessment of type A inspection bodies on the occasion of supervision of inspection bodies performing inspection in the field of ADR for their own needs, whereas the said inspection would, from July 2011, become mandatory in accordance with the regulation (RID/ADR 2009), and a discussion about the status of answers (informative or mandatory) related to queries made in the previous period, the need to define what module in the Directive would be the closest one to the activity, when can ISO/IEC 17020 be used on the same footing as the concrete module, and about the possibility to take over key words from the list set for certification bodies certifying products.

The issues planned for this meeting were discussed by the EA IS participants and they related to: how to meet the requirements of 7.5. of ISO/IEC 17011, assessment of bodies having one employee, cases when the law stipulates that a body should perform maintenance and inspection activities at the same time.

During the preparatory EA SS meeting there was a discussion about the document entitled EA 6/02 and the need for explaining how to implement EN 45011 and ISO/IEC 17021 when using ISO 3834 in case of certification of welding process. Additionally, there were two round-table discussions related to the description of the scope of accreditation of certification bodies certifying management systems (necessity to describe it by means of EA and NACE codes at the same time), and to the practice of ABs when determining the necessary number of witnessing sessions when assessing certification bodies certifying management systems and related to the use of reports of the respective national AB to be used by a foreign AB.

EA SS work plan approved by the  GA was presented at the EA SS meeting, and it covered, among other things, the development of accreditation schemes for GLOBAL GAP, ISO 22000, EOQ employees; provision of inputs for the development and implementation of sectoral schemes and EU directives in the light of certification activities, guidelines for EMAS and other schemes related to environmental protection, guidelines for the scope of the EU Regulation 834/2007 for Organic Farming (Food WG); discussion about the need for the guideline in the field of agriculture and food, discussion about the use of ISO 14065 for the accreditation of GHG verifiers, monitoring of the application of EA-2/17 and organisation on the occasion of exchange of experience (witnessing, cross-frontier accreditation, etc.).

Results of the work of work bodies and working groups relating to certification in the field of food and EMS were presented, and groups in charge of drafting the document relating to the codes for certification bodies certifying products.