The second meeting of the Aviation Security Thematic Group took place in Brussels, on 14-15 June 2012, chaired by the Coordinator Goeran Loevestam of JRC-IRMM and with the participation of 40 experts and officials from Member State civil services, test laboratories, aviation security product manufacturers, EOS, IATA, ACI Europe, ECAC and the European Commission.
The meeting considered the European legislative options for test and evaluation of aviation security equipment, in particular the relative merits of defining test methods directly in legislation versus the “new approach” of defining them in associated CEN/CENELEC standards. The participants recognised merits in the existing ECAC Common Evaluation Process, but they are considering ways in which it could be made more rigorous, objective, supportive of innovation and better integrated with European legislation. Working groups are being established for an inventory of technical specifications and detection requirements and conformity assessment documents used in the EU; for a study on state-of-the-art and state-of-practice related to detection feasibility using explosive trace detection; and the assessment and verification of Common/Conformity Testing Methodologies.
The next meeting will take place on 5 October.