Russian certification authorities have adopted a set of recommendations to allow certification bodies to conduct a site audit required for an EAC certificate remotely. This will enable foreign manufacturers to issue EAC certificates for serial release, which was not possible previously due to travelling restrictions.

Ministry of Industry and Trade together with Federal Accreditation Service prepared an expanded set of recommendations on temporary measures related to site audits, inspection control and other certification procedures due to the spread of COVID-19. Previous measures introduced in March 2020 are no longer valid.

According to the set or recommendations, site audit that is required to be conducted to issue an EAC certificate for serial release can now be conducted remotely by a mean of online video conference under a surveillance of a certification body.

Necessary procedures that are usually conducted during site audits such as product sample selection, production facility analysis and collection of necessary documentation will be conducted remotely. No actual visit to a production facility is required.

It is currently unclear how exactly this procedure should be conducted and there are still a lot of issues under question. We expect that during the next 2-3 weeks the question will be still under discussion before it will be possible to implement remote site audit.