A brief history of the accreditation organization
Assessing the competence of laboratories - Accreditation and alternatives

In Western Europe, the practice of accreditation began in the late 1960s in the field of calibration laboratories, first in Great Britain and then in France. The 1970s saw the introduction of similar procedures in Sweden, the Netherlands, Italy and the Federal Republic of Germany, joined in the 1980s by Finland, Austria, Hungary, Portugal and Norway. At the same time, accreditation systems for testing and analysis laboratories were introduced. In most countries, these systems were developed in parallel with existing accreditations for calibration laboratories.

The introduction of the single market in Europe led to an explosion in the number...