Administrative simplification has become one of the major challenges for European public administrations. The European Commission itself, in its initiative titled A Compass for EU Competitiveness, insists on the need to “simplify the regulatory environment, reducing burdens and promoting speed and flexibility.” In this context, accreditation is a tool increasingly used by European, national, regional, and local administrations around the world to move towards simpler regulations without compromising legal certainty or public trust.

Therefore, ENAC has published a new document that offers the different public administrations a clear and practical view of how accreditation can support administrative simplification processes.

Conformity assessors: a key piece for regulating effectively

The text highlights that numerous regulatory developments rely on the performance of conformity assessment bodies (CABs), such as laboratories, inspection bodies, or certification bodies, whose role is essential for inspecting compliance with the requirements established in areas as diverse as industrial safety, water quality, cybersecurity, energy efficiency, environmental protection, or food quality. Ensuring the technical competence and rigor of these bodies is key to any regulation’s effectiveness.

However, regulating EOC activity and supervising their performance is a challenge for Administrations, as it requires specialized technical knowledge and resources that are not always available. In this scenario, accreditation provides an effective and widely recognized solution.

Accreditation: trust based on technical competence

Accreditation, as set out in Regulation (EC) No 765/2008, is the internationally recognized mechanism to demonstrate CABs’ technical competence. ENAC, as Spain’s national accreditation body, operates independently, on a non-profit basis, and under international supervision, periodically inspecting accredited bodies through an audit team and highly qualified experts.

This model provides answers regarding regulatory provisions’ effectiveness:

• Promoting reliable supervision: since ENAC carries out rigorous and periodic inspections, it frees the Administration from having to assume this task directly
• Reducing the need to regulate: since the requirements are already included in international standards, it avoids creating unnecessary new technical regulation.

The result is a mechanism that provides legal certainty, transparency, and a significant reduction in costs and time, both for the Administration and for companies.

A bridge between regulation and the market

Accreditation has a differential advantage, which is that it operates both in the regulatory and voluntary spheres. This generates enormous synergies, as an accredited body can demonstrate its competence to multiple administrations and sectors without duplicating assessments.

In addition, thanks to the principle of mutual recognition in the European Union, accreditations granted by any European national accreditation body are accepted as equivalent. This enables a smoother, more coherent, and competitive single market, reducing unnecessary obstacles and fostering trust between administrations and companies.

When to incorporate accreditation into regulation

ENAC, likewise, identifies the main situations in which accreditation is especially useful for regulation, such as delegating public control activities to external organizations or the Administration’s decision-making based on third party-issued assessment reports.

Finally, the new document also includes examples of accreditation schemes developed in collaboration with different administrations, as well as references to multiple European, national, and regional regulations which include accreditation requirements or accredited services in areas as diverse as sustainability, cybersecurity, climate change, energy efficiency, telecommunications, or industrial safety.

Consult the complete document