ENAC presented its 2023 Activity Report during its General Assembly Meeting, where José Manuel Prieto, ENAC’s Chairman, highlighted how "Spanish quality infrastructure acts as one of the essential levers for future economic and social growth, contributing to both public and private objectives in areas such as industrial and technological development, competitiveness in global markets, the efficient use of resources, food safety, health and environmental protection, among others”. In this sense, he highlights "the crucial role of accreditation in promoting this infrastructure" since "it favours the competitiveness of different activity sectors in the Spanish economic and industrial fabric, the effective working of the European Union's Internal Market, and access to third country markets”.

For her part, Beatriz Rivera, ENAC’s general manager, wanted to highlight the Spanish accreditation system's development, where there has been new growth in accredited activities both in the number of organizations and in areas of specialization, with nearly 2000 accredited bodies and a more-than 4% increase in the number of accredited activities”.

Therefore, 2023 ends with 939 testing laboratories and 165 calibration laboratories, 83 medical laboratories and other diagnostic services, 455 inspection bodies and 269 accredited certification bodies, among others, available to the Spanish economy in all sectors.

Among the different activities, for its novelty and growth Beatriz Rivera highlighted, "accredited services related to sustainability aspects that mostly include verification or validation activities based on the ISO/IEC 17029 standard, highlighting the importance of accreditation schemes to control PERTE projects' environmental impact or verifying the energy savings certificate system”. In addition, she pointed out the growth of clinical laboratory accreditation in institutions, from national reference centers to routine and emergency hospitals both public and private; which has allowed the ISO 15189 standard to be extended to other diagnostic services, such as pathological anatomy and other diagnostic tests of clinical physiology.

 

Accreditation, a tool at the service of the regulator

Autonomous regions, city councils and their policies and regulations are also key elements in the quality infrastructure, said the president of ENAC, "for this reason, continuously collaborating with Public Administration representatives in 2023 was still a key element to guaranteeing coordination and joint cooperation in accreditation processes and providing necessary support to achieving their public policy objectives in prominent areas such as sustainability, railway interoperability, energy efficiency, research and development, food safety, defense or cybersecurity, among others”.

She also emphasized the public administrations' continued confidence in accreditation, so that "in addition to more than 300 European and Spanish legislative provisions requiring accredited conformity assessment, new regulations as relevant and impactful as the Cybersecurity Act have been added and will soon be added: the Energy Savings Certificate System derived from the obligations acquired with the EU through the Energy Efficiency Directive, Regulation 2023/956 establishing a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, the Artificial Intelligence Regulation, or the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive”.

 

Accreditation continues to open markets

In relation to the international market, Beatriz Rivera highlighted "a new recognition, thanks to its international recognition that once again ratifies accreditation's value in opening up foreign markets and helping to reduce or eliminate obstacles”.

About the EU-New Zealand free trade agreement, an alliance that will aid trade and investment, and promote a closer economic relationship between the two sides and will create significant opportunities for businesses and consumers on both sides. To achieve these objectives, the bilateral agreement recommends using accreditation as a tool to overcome technical barriers to trade between the two markets.

<<Consult ENAC's full report at the following link.