WELCOME FROM THE EXPERTISE CENTRE

Welcome to the website of the European Commission funded Project “Support to the Quality Infrastructure in Turkey”.

This Project is designed to support Turkey's private and public sectors in the process of technical harmonisation and aligning of their quality infrastructure with that of the EU in the areas of direct relevance to the Customs Union Decision, more specifically in the parts concerned with technical barriers to trade.

The Project is envisaged as a technical assistance programme. The Programme provides expertise either for training or consultancy for training awareness. The target groups for the Project are officials and employees from the Turkish private and public sector involved in the harmonisation process. The Turkish private sector will form the ultimate group of beneficiaries of the Programme, as they will be able to profit from the enhanced quality infrastructure and the removal of technical barriers to trade.

This Programme amounting to 13 Mio EUR is funded by the Delegation of the European Commission to Turkey and managed by the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN), through the Expertise Centre (ExC) located in Ankara and administered by CEN UK national member British Standards Institution (BSI). The Programme started in July 2002 and has a duration of 5 years.

Two operational partners are selected for the programme. The Undersecretariat of Foreign Trade, Directorate General for Standardisation, is participating on the government side. This DG has extensive experience of working with the EU and is one of the organisations in Turkey responsible for co-ordinating the alignment of sectoral legislation. From the private sector, the Turkish Society for Quality (KalDer) is participating. KalDer was founded in 1991 and is the main quality association in Turkey. Its aim is to promote quality concepts and practice and to provide training on Quality Management issues. KalDer is one of the participants in developing the National Quality Award in Turkey, originally intended for the private sector which has been extended to include SMEs and is planned to cover the public sector too.

This website, specifically designed for the purpose of the Project, is mainly a communication tool, which provides the conformity assessment actors with relevant and updated information relating to the approximation of the Turkish legislation in the area of free movement of goods, the transposition of the “Acquis Communautaire”, and its implementation.

It gives numerous useful links with specialised Turkish and European websites. An electronic library of Turkish and European official documents has been set up in order to help especially the Turkish SMEs to find the relevant texts and procedures for exporting their products (New Approach, Global Approach, Old Approach, Directives, CE Marking, etc.). It proposes an online help desk answering questions relating to the Free Movement of Goods between Turkey and the European Union and vice versa.

last updated: 26.06.2006
burcak.oztekin@expert-centre.org