§9.3 The Trade and Cooperation agreement with the UK

A Trade and Cooperation Agreement (‘TCA’) was agreed between the EU and the UK on 24 December 2020. It is provisionally applicable since 1 January 2021. The TCA has a specific chapter on Technical barriers to trade (TBT) (Chapter 4). Concerning conformity assessment, both the EU and UK agreed to accept a supplier’s declaration of conformity as proof of compliance with its technical regulations for those product areas where their respective legislation on the date of entry into force of the TCA foresees the use of first-party conformity assessment. Where a Party requires third party conformity assessment as a positive assurance that a product conforms to a technical regulation, it shall use accreditation, as appropriate, as a means to demonstrate technical competence to qualify conformity assessment bodies (Article 93 TBT of the TCA). In this regard, the EU and the UK recognise the valuable role that accreditation operated with authority derived from government and on a non-commercial basis can play in the qualification of conformity assessment bodies. The TCA also calls on both parties to use relevant international standards for accreditation and conformity assessment, and to use relevant international standards as a basis for the standards they develop. The TCA also contains an article on marking and labelling (Article 95 TBT of the TCA) that aims to address labelling aspects that may render market access more difficult, for example by foreseeing the possibility to accept labelling, including supplementary labelling or corrections to labelling, taking place in customs warehouses or other designated areas in the country of import as an alternative to labelling in the country of origin. The provision on cooperation on market surveillance and non-food product safety and compliance (Article 96 TBT of the TCA) envisages cooperation and information exchange in the area of non-food product safety and compliance. It also contains the basis for: i) an arrangement for the regular exchange of information concerning the safety of non-food products; and ii) an arrangement on the regular exchange of information concerning measures taken on non-compliant non-food products that are not covered by the arrangement concerning the safety of non-food products. In addition, Article 97 TBT of the TCA provides for technical discussions on draft or proposed technical regulations or conformity assessment procedures. Article 98 TBT of the TCA provides that the Parties shall cooperate in the field of technical regulations, standards and conformity assessment procedures, where it is in their mutual interest, and without prejudice to the autonomy of their own respective decision-making and legal orders. The TCA is however not a mutual recognition agreement for conformity assessment of the type described in Section 9.2, and it does not provide for the mutual recognition of conformity assessment bodies’ results in the EU and UK markets. The TCA provides for a good basis for a longstanding partnership between the EU and the UK outside of the EU Single Market.

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Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-09-07