ENAC has presented its 2022 Activity Report during its General Assembly meeting when José Manuel Prieto, ENAC president, highlighted how "accreditation has been consolidated as the guarantee mechanism at international and European level", as "the European Union recognizes its key role for a transparent and solid working internal market in Europe, providing more product and service safety, being a tool at the service of public policies and enabling companies to address the challenge of internationalizing their activities”.

Similarly, Beatriz Rivera, ENAC general manager, wanted to highlight "one of the most important milestones for an accreditation body: its assessment for maintaining the international recognition agreements”. The different Member States’ accreditation bodies must pass the assessment, as established by the accreditation operation principles in Europe, through Regulation (EC) No. 765/2008 that enables ENAC accreditation to be recognized in more than 100 economies around the world.

“I would like to highlight ENAC's excellent result with the key being the rigor and professionalism, both of the hundreds of people making up ENAC’s staff and of the more than 900 external auditors and expert collaborators in different fields who come from more than 100 reference organizations and who provide the assessments’ essential technical solidity", Rivera said.

 

Accreditation: a guaranteed tool for the market

The good health of Spanish accreditation system has also been noted in 2022, with a new 2% growth in the number of accredited bodies, ending the year with 925 testing laboratories and 165 calibration laboratories, 73 medical laboratories and other diagnostic services, 452 inspection bodies and 229 accredited certification bodies, among others, available to all sectors of the Spanish economy.

Beatriz Rivera, highlighted new disciplines in various Spanish economic sectors "in areas of great social relevance such as the energy and environmental transition process towards a sustainable model, with activities, such as, self-assessment validation, the principle of Do No Significant Harm (DNSH) to the environment, a requirement demanded within the Next Generation EU funds framework related to investment or reform projects’ aid management established by the European Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF)".

It also highlights, once again, the health sector's increased confidence in accreditation, with "the granting of the first accreditation to a biobank, not only in our country, but also in Europe".

 

Accreditation: a tool to service of the regulator

ENAC's president emphasized the public administrations' continued confidence in accreditation, "which this year has continued to play an essential role in more than 300 provisions at European, national and regional level, further guaranteeing the products and services’ reliability, quality and safety”.

“New proof of this is the 2022 European Commission's report to the European Parliament, the Council and the European Economic and Social Committee, which once again showed the European authorities' confidence in accreditation for the common market working optimally" explained José Manuel Prieto.

Likewise, in our country, within the Spanish Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan framework (Plan Nacional de Transformación y Resiliencia, PRTR), he stressed how accreditation has served as a guarantee for the Spanish Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism for granting aid to the different strategic projects for economic recovery and transformation (PERTE, Proyectos Estratégicos para la Recuperación y Transformación Económica).

Finally, ENAC's president thanked Andreas Steinhorst and Mª Pilar Carrato, Executive Secretary of European Accreditation (EA) and the Economic-Financial Director at the Technological Development and Innovation (CDTI) for their participation in the report. Their interviews addressed the EA's and ENAC's roles in the European accreditation infrastructure and the CDTI’s confidence in accreditation to provide the maximum guarantees in validating the DNSH principle required in granting aid to R + D projects.

You can consult the complete ENAC report in the following link.