EU ministers approve accreditation process for forensic laboratories
The European Union’s Council of Ministers has approved an accreditation system for forensic laboratories within the EU to ensure they follow international cleanliness standards. Such laboratories analyse samples for evidence in criminal cases and therefore must be pristine and expertly operated to prevent contamination.
As criminal cases increasingly have a cross-border component within the EU’s 27 member states, the council wants all forensic laboratories to be reliable. In future, a national accreditation body within each member state will accredit forensic service providers operating laboratories as complying with the relevant International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) guidelines.
“The overall aim…is confidence-building between EU member states,” the Council said.
“As a consequence of EU legislation such as the Eurodac regulation [on building an EU-wide fingerprint database] the amount of data transferred across the EU increases. It will therefore become increasingly important to ensure that the quality of the data is sufficiently high.”