Coopération internationale

Why cooperation exists

A report or a certificate often travels further than the body that issued it. The recipient may have no practical way to reassess the laboratory or the certification body. Multilateral arrangements allow an accreditation body that has been evaluated by its peers to have its accredited results accepted by the other signatories, within the scope of the arrangement.

That acceptance is a property of the signatory’s status and of the scope. It is not a property of the word accreditation used in general, and it does not attach to every organisation that takes an interest in the subject.

Arrangements a reader may encounter

European co-operation for Accreditation (EA)

The association of national accreditation bodies in Europe. Its multilateral agreement covers defined accreditation activities among its signatories.

International Accreditation Forum (IAF)

The forum concerned principally with accreditation of bodies that certify management systems, products, processes, services and persons. Its multilateral recognition arrangement has its own scope.

International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC)

The cooperation concerned principally with accreditation of laboratories and inspection bodies. Its mutual recognition arrangement has its own scope.

What follows for a user

A user who needs an attestation that will be accepted under one of these arrangements looks for an accreditation body that is a signatory, and for an activity inside that signatory’s scope. The signatory lists published by EA, IAF and ILAC are the sources for that question. This website does not reproduce those lists and does not place AKZERT on them.

AKZERT may, in future, describe a cooperation that has been agreed and can be evidenced. Until such a description is published with its evidence, readers should treat AKZERT as standing outside those arrangements. Explanatory pages about the arrangements are not an application for membership and not a claim of equivalence.