ATS participation in the EA MAC meeting

Representatives of ATS in the period from 4th to 5th October participated in the meetings of the EA Multilateral Agreement Council (EA MAC) which were held in Brussels, Belgium. 

60 participants from 41 National Accreditation Bodies (NABs) and the representative of the EA Advisory Board attended the EA MAC meeting.

The EA MAC Committee is responsible for the effective and impartial implementation and monitoring of the peer evaluation process. The competence of the Committee is, among other things, to make decisions regarding the status of signatories of EA multilateral agreements (EA MLA) in relation to the peer evaluation, as well as to report to the EA General Assembly on all decisions made. The chairperson of this Committee is Maria Papatzikou from the Hellenic Accreditation Body (ESYD).

The Committee for Multilateral Agreements also deals with adopting policies and operational procedures within the EA regarding peer evaluation and the management, selection, and training of future peer evaluators.

During this meeting, the MAC made the following decisions:

• ATCG, the National Accreditation Body of Accreditation Body of Montenegro, is recognized as a new EA MLA signatory in the fields of testing (EN ISO/IEC 17025), including medical examination (EN ISO 15189), calibration (EN ISO/IEC 17025), inspection (EN ISO/IEC 17020), and Product certification (EN ISO/IEC 17065). The next re-evaluation of ATCG shall take place in two years, in November 2024.
• NAH, the National Accreditation Body of Hungary, remains signatory status in the fields of Calibration (EN ISO/IEC 17025), Testing (EN ISO/IEC 17025) including Medical Examinations (EN ISO 15189), Inspection (EN ISO/IEC 17020), Proficiency Testing Providers (EN ISO/IEC 17043); Certification of Management Systems (EN ISO/IEC 17021-1), Certification of Products (EN ISO/IEC 17065), Certification of Persons (EN ISO/IEC 17024), Validation and Verification (EN ISO 14065 and EN ISO/IEC 17029). Furthermore, NAH shall provide a progress report regarding the implementation of corrective actions to several findings raised during the peer evaluation.
• Revision of the document EA-2/02 - During the meeting, the EA MAC decided to revise the document EA-2/02 EA Procedure for the evaluation of a National Accreditation Body regarding the competence criteria for evaluators. This action follows the outcome of the comments received from the members for the paper within the frame of the reengineering of the EA peer-evaluation process project, based on the approved New Work Item Proposal of 13 October 2020.
•  MAC Management Group - The MAC Management Group (MG) is responsible for effectively managing and harmonizing the peer evaluations and operations of the MAC, including meetings and comprising 12 members.

Following the recent elections held by the MAC for the MAC MG membership, starting 1st of January 2024 the MAC MG will be composed of representatives from the following NABs: AA (Austria), ACCREDIA (Italy), BELAC (Belgium), CAI (Czech Republic), COFRAC (France), DAkkS (Germany), ESYD (Greece), NA (Norway), NAB-MALTA (Malta), SAS (Switzerland), SWEDAC (Sweden), and UKAS (United Kingdom).

Previous, EA MAC 48th was held in Belgrade when ATS was a host, it was written about it HERE