European regulation for accreditation

Every European country will have only a single national accreditation body as of January 2010, in accordance with a regulation passed by the Council of the European Union which was formally adopted on 9 July. The regulation will cover the operation of accreditation in support of voluntary conformity assessment as well as conformity assessment required by legislation.

The aim of the move is to improve the consistency of accreditation services across Europe and to reinforce the status of accreditation. It has been developed amid growing recognition of the importance of accreditation to the EU’s economic structure and sets common requirements for national accreditation bodies which will be monitored by EU member state governments.

Requirements include the need for accreditation bodies to be independent from those they accredit, be objective and impartial, operate on a not-for-profit basis and to not offer services already offered by conformity assessment bodies or in any other way compete with other national accreditation bodies. Accreditation bodies will have to be a member of the European Co-operation for Accreditation (EA) and participate in the peer-evaluation programme offered by the EA.