34 EA Full Members

ATCG, the national accreditation body of Montenegro which was holding a contract of cooperation with EA, applied for EA Full Membership as a result of Montenegro being identified as a potential candidate country by the EU. Acting upon the Multi-Lateral Agreement Council’s recommendation, the 28th EA General Assembly on 23 November 2011 in Warsaw agreed that ATCG becomes a full member, making EA gain a total number of 34 EA Full Members.

Welcome to the first EA Associate Members!

The main change in revised EA Articles of Association consisted in re-introducing EA Associate Membership. The criteria for membership have been revised accordingly and published in EA-1/17 – Supplement 1: Criteria for Membership.
 
Following a resolution of the General Assembly in November 2008, the current signatories to a contract of cooperation or bilateral agreement with EA that are eligible for Associate Membership have been invited in July 2011 to submit a formal application. Twelve applications for EA Associate Membership had been received and processed by the EA MAC since the summer.
 
Acting upon the recommendations made by the EA MAC at its meeting in October 2011, the EA General Assembly in November 2011 agreed that ALGERAC (Algeria), ATS (Serbia), BATA (Bosnia & Herzegovina), BSCA (Belarus), CAECP (Moldova), DA (Albania), DAK (Kosovo under UNSC Resolution 1244/1999), EGAC (Egypt), GAC (Georgia), ISRAC (Israel), NAAU (Ukraine) and TUNAC (Tunisia) become Associate Members of EA with effect from 23 November 2011.
 

The first 12 EA Associate Members and the latest EA MLA signatory posed with the EA Chairman and Vice-Chairman after the signatures of their agreements on 23 November 2011 during the signing ceremony at the Royal Castle in Warsaw, Poland (from left to right): Gezim KARAPICI (DA, Albania), Daniel Pierre (EA Vice-Chairman), Ranko NIKOLIC (ATCG, Montenegro), Tatyana NIKOLAEVA (BSCA, Belarus), Eugenia SPOIALA (CAECP, Moldava), Volodymyr CHEKALIN (NAAU, Ukraine), Dorsaf ZANGARI (TUNAC, Tunisia), Kyriacos TSIMILLIS and Stelios COLOCASSIDES (CYS-CYSAB, Cyprus), Etty FELLER (ISRAC, Israel), Graham TALBOT (EA Chairman), Hassan SHAARAWY (EGAC, Egypt), Dejan KRNJAIC (ATS, Serbia), Zarko PETROVIC (BATA, Bosnia & Herzegovina), Paata GOGOLIDZE (GAC, Georgia), Ibush LUZHA (DAK, Kosovo under UNSC Resolution 1244/1999) and Noureddine BOUDISSA (ALGERAC, Algeria).

One new EA MLA signatory

At the last EA Multi-Lateral Agreement Council meeting on 18-19 October 2011 in Bratislava, Slovakia, CYS-CYSAB (Cyprus) has signed the EA MLA for inspection and testing.
 
So far 31 EA full members are signatories to the EA MLA, out of which 26 have signed for all accreditation activities presently covered by the MLA.

One new EA Recognised Stakeholder

EA has just signed its 8th EA Recognized Stakeholder agreement with ERA, the European Railway Agency, in November 2011.
 
ERA whose administrative Board is composed of representatives of the European Commission, aims to help the construction of a modern, integrated railway network by reinforcing safety and interoperability. One of the EU’s priorities is that railways become more competitive and offer high-quality, end-to-end services without being restricted by national borders.
 
ERA has approached the EA Inspection Committee in order to use accreditation for supervision of assessment bodies performing an independent assessment of the correct application for the risk management process (RMP) in accordance with Regulation (EC) 352/2009 "Common Safety Method on risk evaluation and assessment" based on Directive 2004/49/EC (railway safety).

Good Bye to Guy Jacques as the EAAB Chair and an EAAB member!

The EA Advisory Board held its last meeting on 20 October 2011 at the EFTA Secretariat in Brussels, where Guy Jacques from EUROLAB chaired his last EAAB meeting.
 
Guy Jacques received warm thanks from the whole Board, including the EA Chair and Vice-Chair, for his pionneering contribution and outstanding commitment to the Board and EA, including his active participation in the EA Horizontal Harmonization Committee.
 
Guy’s professionalism, constant enthusiasm and kindness took also great part in enhancing and promoting the EAAB’s work since 2003.

Interim appointments and changes in the EA Advisory Board’s membership

Before the renewal of the Board’s whole membership in the second semester 2012, Michael Nitsche as one of the current EAAB Vice-Chairs, accepted to chair the next EAAB meeting on 26 April 2012 on an interim basis.
 
The EAAB gave a special welcome to Nike Bönnen representing the European Commission (EC) as Annabel Brewka’s successor. Tore Nyvold Thomassen from the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) informed the Board that he attended his last EAAB meeting.
 
Jörg Hartge from the Industry College was appointed as the EAAB observer at the EA HHC meetings. The Board appointed Nike Bönnen as the EAAB observer in the MAC.

EA is active in supporting a better environment

 
EU Emission Trading System (ETS) - Objective 1 January 2013
 
EA proposed a road map for the introduction of accreditation of verification bodies under ISO 14065 into the EA MLA. The General Assembly already resolved that a new activity called “Verification” is defined at level 2 of the MLA, and that this activity is based upon ISO 14065 for environmental verifiers, thus defining ISO 14065 as the level 3 standard under the activity “Verification”.
 
A training event on ISO 14065:2007 and EU ETS Verification Requirements including aspects of the EA peer-evaluation process was also organized on 27-28 and 29-30 September 2011 in Bern, Switzerland. About 35 peer-evaluators attended the two training sessions hosted by SAS and performed by Niels-Christian Dalstrup (DANAK), Varpu Rantanen (FINAS) and Phil Shaw (UKAS).
 
The final draft of the EC Accreditation and Verification (A&V) Regulation is awaited soon. 2011 and 2012 is a busy time for EA and its members as everything must be in place for 1 January 2013 when the A&V Regulation enters into force. The Regulation can be expected to be published in March 2012.
 
In anticipation of the publication of the A&V Directive, a Working Group for the Accreditation of GHG Verifiers will be created to facilitate discussions between EA ABs and the EC, and between EA ABs and stakeholders, as well as to improve collaboration with the EC (when drafting guidelines, for instance). The CC Chair together with the CC Agenda Panel will elaborate draft terms of reference (ToR) of the WG as soon as more information is received from the EC.
 
Provided a need for revision is demonstrated, the EA General Assembly in November 2011 mandated the CC to start a new work item to revise EA-6/03: EA Document for Recognition of Verifiers under the EU ETS Directive in accordance with the published version of the A&V Regulation. This revision will be one of the first tasks of the GHG Accreditation WG.
 
EA and the Environmental Technology Verification (ETV) project
 
EA is also contributing to the development of the ETV scheme designed to evaluate claims about the impact of new technologies on the environment. Some discussions in the IC are dealing with the EU ETV Pilot Programme which aims at promoting environmental technologies by providing technology developers, manufacturers and investors with a third-party validation (by verification bodies) of the performance of innovative environmental technologies. ISO/IEC 17020 is regarded as the accreditation standard for verification activities.
 
The IC is expected to establish some coordination and harmonization in this area for which accreditation is likely to be needed in early 2012, especially in those European countries where national ABs are already involved in verification projects. For this purpose, the IC members have nominated representatives to be part of an informal (electronic) leading group and exchange experience/questions on this matter. A list of 15 representatives with contact details was circulated among IC members in November 2011.

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