EA MAC decision on maintenance and extension of the EA MLA scope

10 Apr 15:34Current events

After ATS had been evaluated in the period between the 9^th and 13^th September 2014 by EA peer evaluation team in accordance with the EA-2/02 M: 2011 EA Policy and Procedures for the Multilateral Agreement (Annex 9) and the application that ATS submitted at the end of 2012 to extend the scope of the existing EA MLA, the EA team report and report of Task Force Group that was established by EA MAC was analysed at the EA MAC meeting that was held in the period between 9^th and 10^th April 2014 in Warsaw, Poland.

A decision was made at the EA MAC meeting to maintain the scope of signed EA MLA for: testing laboratories, including medical laboratories, calibration laboratories, inspection bodies and certification bodies providing certification of products, and to extend the EA MLA to include certification bodies providing certification of management systems and certification bodies providing certification of persons.

EA General Assembly will, at its 33rd meeting (27^th and 28^th May 2014), officiallly adopt the EA MAC decision when the new EA MLA will be signed and it will now include: testing, calibration, inspection, certification of products, certification of management systems and certification of persons. ATS will then submit a new application to the International Accredition Forum (IAF) to extend the scope of the Agreement that ATS signed on 25^th October 2012 (certification of products) and hence include certification of management systems.

ATS will be peer evaluated again in four years (2017) when it will be evaluated once again if the established accreditation system is in compliance with the requirements of ISO/IEC 17011, relevant requirements of the EU regulations (Regulation No. 765/2008) and guidance documents of international organisations for accreditation (EA, ILAC and IAF).

We hope that ATS will extend the scope of EA MLA again during the 2017 peer evaluation given that accreditation activities as regards PT providers have already started and it is expected that the first accreditation will soon be granted in this field.