The purpose of ENAC is to build trust in the market and in the wider community in relation to the technical competence of accredited conformity assessors, thus contributing to people’s safety and welfare, the quality of products and services, and environmental protection, and thereby to the increased competitiveness of Spanish products and services and to a reduction in the costs for society due to these activities.

To perform its function, ENAC carries out the following activities:

• Declaring technical competence of conformity assessors through an independent, impartial and transparent assessment system based on international criteria.
• Promoting international acceptance of activities of accredited conformity assessors by arranging recognition agreements, thus facilitating business exchanges in a global marketplace.
• Cooperating with government and other accreditation user organizations, assuring that the accreditation service that they are going to make use of meets their needs.
• Offering conformity assessors a high value-added service that represents a differential feature in the market by being a guarantee of integrity and competence and thus increasing business opportunities and inspiring public confidence in their activities.
• Managing the accreditation system with efficacy criteria and in keeping with client needs.
• Furthering and disseminating accreditation criteria and procedures to assist conformity assessors in their access to accreditation and publicize the concept of accreditation and ENAC activities and its accredited bodies to all stakeholders.
• Cooperating with national and international institutions and organisations on aspects relating to its aims and objectives.

In order to be able to achieve its aims while abiding by the accreditation guidelines laid down by the European Commission, ENAC has to bring its management and operations into line with a series of guiding principles:

GUIDING PRINCIPLES

• Useful for all stakeholders: Its service should offer value to all stakeholders, who have different and sometimes conflicting expectations and needs:

• The actual conformity assessment bodies (CAB) to which ENAC lends its services and which need to be able to prove their technical competence.
• The clients of these assessors who need reliable information on the competence and recognition of CABs.
• Accreditation users or prescribers – government in the case of assessment schemes in the regulatory field – before which the CAB client wishes to validate information –reports or certificates – generated by the CABs because the latter requires a system inspiring trust in the accuracy and technical soundness of the issuer of the documents (reports or certificates) on which decisions are to be based.

• Non-commercial nature: It should act solely on technical grounds and avoid making decisions for commercial reasons.
• Added value to society: All conformity assessment schemes accredited by ENAC should add value either to the conformity assessor’s client or to the end user.
• Independence from the market: Independence must be strictly guaranteed by avoiding:

• Any kind of activity other than those carried out for strict compliance with its function.
• Interference in the development and definition of the requirements to be assessed by the CAB, a task that should be performed by the different stakeholders.

• Reactive nature: Accreditation has to be regarded as an instrument placed at the disposal of stakeholders and it is they who must request it when deemed fit. ENAC should deliver solutions, not generate needs.