15th meeting of the EA Communications and Publications Committee (EA CPC)

15th meeting of the Communications and Publications Committee (EA CPC) of the European Cooperation for Accreditation (EA) and a meeting of the IT Task Force was held in Madrid in the period between 24th March and 27th March. The said meetings were organised by the Spanish Accreditation Body (ENAC).

At the last meeting the Committee adopted the online interactive "Welcome Kit" giving practical information for newcomers to the EA family that was published in Communication materials/Information about EA/EA Welcome Kit last November.

Members of the Committee agreed to set up a task force in order to maintain and update the welcome kit. It was also decided upon that questions on the Regulation EC 765/2008 will be inserted.

The new version of the text of the EA MLA promotion page that was adopted at the last session has just been implemented. It gives generic information for a large public audience including the explanation of what the EA MLA is, benefits of signing the contract, and the list of signatories to the agreement and the scopes of accreditation they agreed about.

A "Briefing for Government and Regulators" has been drafted out in order to help ABs to develop a strong relationship with a central coordinating point at the national level. A brochure will soon be issued! A word document will also be available so that members can directly incorporate their national language into it.

The Members discussed the activities that will be carried out by the EA on the occasion of 9th June as the International Accreditation Day, and about last year’s experiences of the member states.

At the March meeting, the CPC Members agreed to revise Document EA-1/08 with the idea to create an informative document promoting the EA MLA and BLA Signatories to regulators and stakeholders so realise the importance of the multilateral agreement (EA MLA).

Further to Project Group 2 recommendation, a task force has been set up to develop IT tools for sharing knowledge and information on EU directives. This task force aims to create a communication infrastructure for EA members to have access to all relevant information on the new requirements for each directive in a user-friendly way. Progress to be reported in autumn.

From the discussion arisen at the last CPC meeting, there was clearly a need to work on a corporate identity for EA. A TFG was set up to elaborate on a brief to be further developed by a professional designer.

The CPC members are unanimously convinced that the newsletter should be reactivated but in a different way. It will be an EA web newsletter. The principle is to highlight the news on the website in one file to be downloaded or printed.

The CPC meeting was attended by Jasna Stojanović.