Notified bodies

Market surveillance authorities should have very good working relationships with the testing laboratories and Notified Bodies in their Member State and also at cross-border level. When deciding which laboratories should be involved in a Market Surveillance project, a number of considerations must be made and tests should be reliable, substantiated by the use of accredited laboratories wherever possible.
It is important to take into account that several types of laboratories exist based on their status as Notified Bodies and/or Accredited Laboratories, or testing laboratories. It has to be considered that some testing laboratories operating in the European market are neither accredited laboratories nor notified bodies.
The most important activities that were performed at European level were:

• Contacts with EU Commission involved DGs on the best approach to be taken towards Notified Bodies;
• Contacts with European Accreditation with the view to strengthen the contacts with PROSAFE and to have the possibility to contribute to development of the Guidance documents developed by European Accreditation and that are of interest for Task H.

Particular attention was given to the need to clearly define the frame of the activities developed by the Task H to avoid they overlap and create undue repetition of the activities with those performed by the European Accreditation system or under the responsibility of Notifying Authorities.