What should manufacturers and importers of products do now? How can you now issue a certificate of conformity? After all, shops, supermarkets and tender committees will still require a certificate.
So, what is the UkrSEPRO system, how did it appear and why is it being canceled?
In 1993, the Decree of the Cabinet of Ministers "On Standardization and Certification" No. 46-93 was published, which initiated the Certification System. This system was based on the old Soviet GOSTs and was supplemented by revised or developed new Ukrainian DSTUs. And already on February 1, 2005, the Order of the State Committee for Consumer Protection and Standardization of Ukraine No. 28 determined the list of products and services subject to mandatory certification in Ukraine.
Initially, this list included a huge number of food and non-food products and services. It included electrical products for household and industrial purposes, machine tools and mechanisms, pressure equipment, gas-fired equipment, cosmetics and detergents, weapons, cars and spare parts for them, building materials, children's clothing and footwear, underwear, personal protective equipment, tobacco and alcoholic products, tea, coffee, mineral water, fish, baby food and much more.
On the one hand, such a certification system protected the market from low-quality products, on the other hand, it hindered the development of industry and technologies. This was expressed in the fact that the UkrSEPRO system was based on outdated GOSTs of the 70s-80s and domestic DSTUs developed in the 90s. Obviously, in those years, neither new materials and technologies that are currently used in industry, nor entire industries, were foreseen.
In North America, Australia, and Europe, it has long been understood that state control of the certification sector cannot keep up with the speed of technological development, and such an approach will slow down their development. Therefore, mandatory state certification in these countries was abolished back in the 1980s. Starting in the mid-2000s, specialized technical committees worked on the transition of the domestic certification system to a more modern and flexible conformity assessment system - a modular system for assessing conformity to Technical Regulations.
With each Technical Regulation put into effect, the list of products subject to mandatory certification was reduced, and from the beginning of 2018 this list will be abolished altogether.
How can I get a certificate now if there is no state certification system?
The abolition of the state certification system does not eliminate the possibility of confirming the quality of products with a certificate, but on the contrary, it makes it easier for manufacturers to obtain it. In the UkrSEPRO system, manufacturers were placed within the framework of DSTU requirements, many of which have lost their relevance, and there was no way to deviate from them. If the product did not fit into this framework, it simply could not enter the market. All certificates were entered into a single state register of certified products.
The main difference between voluntary and mandatory UkrSEPRO certification is that the manufacturer or seller independently chooses those characteristics of his product that he wants to confirm to the consumer or the market in general.
For many years, voluntary certification has been practiced in Western countries. A similar approach to certification began to be introduced in Ukraine in 2001. By analogy with European countries, the National Accreditation Agency (NAAU) has been established in Ukraine, which authorizes those certification bodies (they can be both state and private) that have confirmed their technical competence and have competent personnel on their staff to carry out work on product certification. The technical competence of a certification body (CB) is confirmed by an Accreditation Certificate, which indicates the products for which it can issue a certificate in accordance with international practices for carrying out certification work. It is worth noting that NAAU is a member of the International Accreditation Forum (IAF) and the European Accreditation Association (EA), which guarantees the recognition of a certificate issued in Ukraine throughout Europe and in more than 40 countries around the world. Currently, the procedures for issuing a certificate in Ukraine are identical to European ones, and this is an important step for domestic manufacturers to open up European and global markets.