The World Trade Organization's Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) recently held its conference on guidelines for conformity assessment procedures where it has once again highlighted accreditation's role as a mechanism for reducing market limitations and aiding the free movement of products and services across borders around the world.

Technical barriers to trade arise from different countries' technical regulations, whether they are regulatory requirements aiming to protect consumer safety and the environment or voluntary standards that generally define the quality characteristics that the product must meet in order to satisfy buyers.

To overcome them, the WTO established the Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement more than 25 years ago, which aims to ensure that technical regulations, standards, and conformity assessment procedures are not discriminatory or do not create unnecessary barriers to trade. One of the agreement's instruments is the TBT Committee, where WTO members discuss specific trade concerns related to specific laws, regulations or procedures affecting trade relations between them. Members also exchange experiences on implementing the Agreement in order to ensure that the Agreement's provisions are applied effectively and more efficiently.

Regarding this, at its last meeting, it highlighted accreditation's role in aiding trade by generating trust in conformity assessment bodies and so contributed to conformity assessment results being accepted:

“Accreditation, when operated according to relevant international standards, guides and recommendations, promotes confidence in the technical competence of conformity assessment bodies. Using (or taking account of) international treaties, agreements or arrangements involving cooperation among accreditation bodies can usefully contribute to reinforcing the acceptance of conformity assessment results. Multilateral recognition arrangements, such as the International Accreditation Forum (IAF) and the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC) can play an important role in supporting wider the acceptance of conformity assessment results around the world”.

It also stressed that "conformity assessment procedures may include the acceptance of conformity assessment results (e.g., certificates of conformity, laboratory tests or inspection reports) performed by conformity assessment bodies recognized by signatories to international accreditation fora”.

With all this, administrations and markets recognizing accreditation is once again highlighted, ratifying its value as a tool for aiding access to foreign markets, since it allows the reports and certificates issued by accredited bodies to be accepted in more than 120 economies around the world.