Council Decision 768/2008/EC lays down that the Commission, in co-operation with the Member States, must ensure that close co-operation is organised between the notified bodies in order to ensure consistent technical application of the conformity assessment procedures set out in the Community Harmonisation Directives based on the "New Approach" and the "Global Approach".

For this purpose, the notified bodies notified for a particular Directive or field must meet with each other to ensure co-ordination and establish consistent methods which will make certain that their conformity assessment activities are all based on the same agreed principles and produce comparable and reliable results.

Moreover, in order to ensure consistency between the various groups, the Commission can assemble and organise inter-sector groups, by inviting the technical secretaries and Chairmen of the co-ordination of notified bodies either together or in restricted groups when specific subjects are discussed.

Experience to date in implementing the above Directives has shown that, in the interest of efficiency, the Coordination Chair for each group of notified bodies should be assisted both by a permanent Administrative Secretariat which provides logistical support for the groups’ work, and by a Technical Secretariat.

The Commission services attach great importance to maintaining a balance of interests between the various nationalities in the Chairmanship of the co-ordination groups and in the technical secretariats, and consider that, while a single body can provide the administrative secretariat for different groups of notified bodies, each group should have its own technical secretariat, in view of the technical knowledge particular to the areas covered by each of the directives concerned.

Moreover, this approach is likely to facilitate the meetings, where needed, of intersectoral groups to deal with problems relating to two or more directives.

Please note that additional information may be posted on this web page during the publication stage. As such, we encourage you to visit this page regularly.