Ignacio Pina has been elected President of European Accreditation (EA), the European accreditors' organization, in the General Assembly held in Sofia (Bulgaria) on the 16th and 17th May.

Ignacio Pina has been actively participating internationally, especially in EA field, being on its Executive Committee since 2005, chairing its Committee of Horizontal Harmonisation since 2013 and occupying the Vice-Presidency of the European organization in 2017, also in ILAC and IAF as an EA representative in the IAF Executive Committee and co-Chair of the ILAC and IAF Inspection Committee.

With this appointment, for the next two years Ignacio Pina will preside over the body which brings together all European national accreditation bodies having been designated by the European Commission pursuant to Regulation (EC) No. 765/2008 of the European Parliament and the Council, which establishes the European accreditation model as the body responsible for operating the European accreditation infrastructure. Since 2009 there has been an agreement between the EA and the European Commission (EC) that specifies, among other points, EA-specific tasks as well as the means of the Commission's financing and supervision.

Thereby, the EA is the responsible body for safeguarding the value and credibility of conformity assessment bodies accredited within the European market and managing the peer evaluation system demanded by their own rules. All national accreditation bodies should follow these to demonstrate the equivalence of their performance. National accreditation bodies that exceed this assessment agree to the signing of the European and international multilateral recognition agreement, since the EA is one of the regions recognized by the international accreditation organizations ILAC and IAF.