International
NMO co-ordinates input into international forums including the International Organization of Legal Metrology (OIML) and European Cooperation in Legal Metrology (WELMEC).
NMO aim to positively influence EU and international legal metrology forums in order to benefit UK businesses, their customers and consumers. We do this by active participation in a number of international committees covering areas of interest to both UK businesses and consumers. We are working towards ensuring a level playing field and reducing technical barriers to international trade.
As well as providing the Government to Government point of contact for Weights and Measures, NMO actively participates in OIML with the aim of influencing the regulatory requirements internationally in accordance with the wishes of UK stakeholders, including manufacturers, legislators, and enforcers. Ultimately this will benefit consumers. The UK provides the Secretariats for important OIML technical committees such as OIML TC 9/SC 2 - Automatic weighing instruments; and for WELMEC Working groups such as WG 2 - Directive Implementation (90/384/EEC), WG 5 - Metrological Supervision and Convenorship of WG6 - Prepackages.
OIML has over 57 country members and a further 58 corresponding country members so are very influential in harmonising world legal metrology requirements. They produce International Recommendations which are similar to technical standards and provide the basis for laws regulating measuring equipment, and quantity control and quantity labelling pre-packages. They also produce OIML Documents which give guidance on establishing a legal measurement system.
WELMEC is an organisation of European Union and European Free Trade association (EFTA) Member States that pursues cooperation in legal metrology. There are currently 30 Members and 7 Associate members, and 7 Observer and 4 Corresponding organisations who participate. To this end they publish Guides which are not mandatory but provide solutions which will be acceptable to European Regulators.
All published OIML and WELMEC documents are available for free down load from their web sites.
