EA - EUROPEAN COOPERATION ON ACCREDITATION

EA is Europe's cooperation organization for accreditation bodies. For more than 20 years, EA - European co-operation for Accreditation - has worked on harmonizing and interpreting the international standards for accreditation of companies.

EA has accreditation bodies from 50 countries as members and is administered from Paris. The operation is financed by membership fees as well as support from the EU and EFTA.

Technical cooperation takes place in four EA committees. Here sits both accreditation bodies and stakeholders, for example organizations within the area in question.

Interpretations of standards are adopted at EA's General Assembly. Then they are published as EA documents - either in the form of mandatory documents or as guides.

CONFIDENCE IN REPORTS AND CERTIFICATES

EA also works to ensure that companies and authorities can have confidence in the services provided by accredited businesses:

reports within testing, calibration and inspection as well as
certificates, issued by companies in the field of certification and verification.

The building of confidence in the European system of accreditation is based on the confidence that the market of each country has in the national accreditation body and the accredited companies.

The means to increase trust across national borders is an agreement between accreditation bodies to mutually recognize accredited reports and certificates of enterprises.

Read the RA-report on MLA report here

EA EVALUATES ACCREDITATION BODIES

To ensure that accreditation bodies have confidence in each other, EA regularly evaluates the national bodies. In this evaluation the national body will be assessed by representatives from accreditation bodies of other nations.

With these evaluations the EA assesses and monitors that accreditation standards are applied and interpreted in a uniform way.

In addition, it is ensured that the market can have confidence in an accredited company - regardless of which national accreditation body has accredited the company.

DANAKS AGREEMENTS WITH EA

DANAK has concluded agreements with EA on the mutual acceptance of reports and certificates with DANAKs accreditation symbol in these areas:

calibration
testing
medical examination
product certification
management systems certification
certification of persons
inspection
validation and verification
proficiency testing providers

DANAKS EFFORT IN EA

Representatives from DANAK take part in the work of EA via EA's General Assembly and EA's committees. In addition, DANAK is represented in EA's working groups, where, among other things, work is done on common interpretation of standards. EA has working groups in 7 key areas and in addition sets down task forces to do more short-term projects.

Present contacts at DANAK to EA:

Director Jesper Høy
Head of section Kirsten Marie Rosenberg: Member of EA's Laboratory Committee.
Head of section Karsten Tølløse: Member of EA's committees for certification and inspection.
Quality manager Allan Munck: Member of EA's horizontal harmonization committee.

EA has released a series of leaflets focusing on different parts of the accreditation work.

Read them here