Congratulations to our colleagues from TUNAC and NAB-MALTA!
TUNAC, the Tunisian accreditation body has been accepted as a signatory to a bilateral agreement with EA for testing and calibration.
NAB-MALTA has been accepted as a signatory to the EA MLA for testing.

NATA from Australia already signatory to a bilateral agreement with EA for testing and calibration is now a signatory in the field of inspection: congratulations!

The search on keywords for testing is now operational.
Data from DAR-BMWI (Germany), DANAK (Denmark), ENAC (Spain) and SNAS (Slovakia) are available for the search on testing at http://db.european-accreditation.org.

EA welcomes the adoption by the European Parliament of the new legislative package on the internal market for goods. Discussions continue on a sustained pace to develop the appropriate framework for the cooperation between EA, the EC and EFTA. In particular, EA contributes to the future “guidelines” for cooperation, a document that will support the future partnership agreement to be signed by the EC, EFTA, EA and possibly representatives of the national authorities.

The Executive and the 7 active working groups and project teams remain highly involved in investigating the best organisational structure, operating and working practices, secretariat resources and financial resources for EA to be able to stand up to the expectations put on the European Infrastructure for Accreditation as a result of the new legislation. The next General Assembly in Tallinn will mark a key milestone in the development plan of EA where key decisions will be made to ensure that EA gets ready for January 1st 2010.

The 2008 International CITA Conference will take place in Porto, Portugal on May 6 to 8 , 2008.
Theme: Win/Win Approaches" for PTI "Periodical Technical Inspection" and "Roadside Inspections". More information.
 

EA supports the Congress and will facilitate a round table on "Accreditation and accredited conformity assessment services as means to support diffusion and consolidation of metrological culture and practices in modern economies and societies"
The EA Chair is a member of the Scientific and Technical Committee.

The 75th International Agriculture Fair will host a seminar on “Accreditation in the Food Chain – Quality and Food Safety” on 14 May 2008 in Novi Sad (Serbia).
The EA Chair will make a presentation at the seminar on “Certification to ISO 22000 – Quality in the Agro-food sector, State-of-the-art and Evolutionary Trends”

The European Commission is organising a Green Week (3 - 6 June) and associated conference. If you are interested in more information or registration for the conference in Brussels, further details are available on-line at http://ec.europa.eu/environ-ment/greenweek

The European Commission has undertaken that within one year of the publication of the Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council setting out the requirements for accreditation and market surveillance relating to the marketing of products it should present an in-depth analysis in the realm of consumer safety markings, if needed followed by legislative proposals.
 
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Christina Waddingon (FINAS, Finland) chaired the 15th meeting of the Laboratory Committee in Athens on March 12-13. As a result of the meeting, a management group was elected whose members will be in charge of specific topics, such as Food, ILCs, Environment, Forensic science etc. The Chair also surveyed the participants to identify their main issues of interest to be developed over future meetings within the frame of an agreed work program. Andreas Steinhorst, DACH (Germany) was elected Vice Chair of the Committee.

The EA Best Practice Guide for communications with national regulators has been published to assist EA Members in establishing and developing relations with their national authorities. This is an important step forward in EA's preparation to its future role as foreseen by the new legislative proposals of the Commission.
A benchmarking survey will be conducted in summer among the EA members to evaluate progress made and actions undertaken to develop or reinforce communications with national authorities.

Accreditation of flexible scopes, guidance for scopes of medical laboratories, guidance on application of ISO/IEC 17021 for combined audits are work items that are developing in EA at the moment.
The EA-2/14 Procedure for ILCs in Calibration in support of the MLA is out for voting until beginning of May. 

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