DAkkS commitment to the reduction of German-Indian trade barriers
With its participation in the sixth annual meeting of the German-Indian Quality Infrastructure working group, the German National Accreditation Body (Deutsche Akkreditierungsstelle, DAkkS) renewed its commitment to the reduction of technical barriers to trade within the framework of accreditation and conformity assessment.
At the annual meeting, which took place in Berlin on 17 and 18 January at the invitation of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi), DAkkS played an active role, within the scope of its responsibility for the WTO mutual recognition agreement on conformity assessment, in the joint German-Indian work programme for 2019. This commitment is based on the international accreditation agreements of the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC) and the International Accreditation Forum (IAF).
Its focus is on the reduction of barriers to trade in the areas of data protection regulation and IT security in the economy and industrial production. In particular, the establishment of joint conformity assessment programmes is envisaged, with a view to enabling the implementation of both the Indian and German requirements with respect to regulation and standardization with a single audit or certification, and to providing evidence of this for market access in the respective target country.
In the first instance, the goal of the working group is to develop solutions at the technical level, which will then have an influence on the political debate. A key focus is on strengthening cooperation between the two countries in the areas of standardization, accreditation and conformity assessment, metrology, product safety and market surveillance.
In addition to DAkkS, participants included the Indian delegation from the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, the Ministry of Heavy Industry, the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). On the German side, the meeting was attended by the German Institute for Standardization (DIN), the German Commission for Electrical, Electronic & Information Technologies of DIN and VDE (DKE) and subordinate authorities (PTB, BAM). The dialogue is part of the Global Project Quality Infrastructure (GPQI), a framework within which the Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy cooperates with countries such as Brazil, China, India and Mexico and contributes to overcoming technical barriers to trade, improving product safety and strengthening consumer protection. Implementation of the project is supported by the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ).
