Insights · 4 min read
Your European client asked for an "accredited certificate". What do they mean?
The request arrives in one line and could mean either of two things that have almost nothing in common. Answering the wrong one wastes months.
Published by CAS — Conformity Assessment Services · 4 September 2026
The request arrives in one line and could mean either of two things that have almost nothing in common. Answering the wrong one wastes months.
So the first move is not to produce a certificate. It is to find out which question was asked.
The two things "accredited" can mean
A voluntary scheme certificate from an accredited body. Your client wants assurance that the certification body which audited you was itself assessed by a national accreditation body — that the certificate is not self-declared and not from a body nobody checked. This is what the request means in the large majority of cases.
Conformity assessment for an EU regulated sector. Some products are governed by EU legislation which requires assessment by a body designated for that purpose. This is a legislative route with its own rules, and it is not the same thing at all.
The words are identical. The routes do not overlap.
How to tell which one you are being asked for
Two questions settle it, and both are for your client rather than for us.
Which standard or scheme, by name? ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 22000 — these are voluntary schemes. If the answer names a product directive or a regulation, you are in the second category.
Is this required by law for the product, or by you as the buyer? A legal requirement attaching to the product points to the regulated route. A purchasing requirement is the voluntary one, however firmly it is expressed.
An enquiry that survives both questions is answerable. One that does not is a schedule waiting to slip.
The voluntary route, and how recognition works
For voluntary management system schemes, the mechanism is the IAF Multilateral Recognition Arrangement.
Accreditation bodies that sign it are peer-evaluated against each other. The effect is that accreditation bodies recognise each other's accreditations as equivalent — so a certificate issued under one signatory's accreditation is recognised by the others.
EGAC is a signatory. Certificates accredited for ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 45001, ISO 22000 and ISO 50001 fall within EGAC's IAF MLA scope. ISO 22301 is EGAC-accredited and sits outside that scope, so those certificates carry the EGAC accreditation mark without the IAF MLA mark.
Your client can check any of it themselves on IAF CertSearch, which is usually the fastest way to end the conversation.
The regulated route, and why it is different
EU regulated sectors work through legislation rather than through commercial recognition.
Regulation (EC) 765/2008 sets the framework for accreditation in the Union, and among its features is that each member state operates a single national accreditation body. Where EU legislation requires third-party assessment for a product — CE marking under a product directive, and the activity of notified bodies — the assessment has to come through that structure.
IAF MLA recognition does not substitute for it. The two arrangements serve different purposes and are not interchangeable, and no quantity of ISO management system certification changes that.
CAS accreditation covers voluntary management system schemes. If what your client needs is conformity assessment for a regulated product, we will tell you so directly rather than sell you something adjacent. That answer takes one conversation and saves a quarter.
A third possibility worth ruling out
Sometimes "accredited certificate" means neither — it means a specific scheme the buyer or their sector operates, with its own rules and assessor pool.
These are contractually driven, and the buyer requiring one can always name it. If your client cannot name the scheme, that itself is information: they may be passing down a requirement they have not examined, and asking them to check often resolves the whole request.
What travels, and what does not
A certificate within EGAC's IAF MLA scope carries recognition among IAF MLA signatories, is published to IAF CertSearch, and can be checked by anyone.
A certificate outside any accreditation carries whatever authority the issuing body has on its own, which your client will discover when they look for it in a register.
A certificate for a regulated product from a body without the relevant designation does not become adequate by being accredited for something else.
The useful discipline is to know which of the three you are holding, before your client works it out.