Brazilian-German Working Group QI: Work Plan 2020-2021 signed
Brazil
On 25 November 2020, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) and the Brazilian Ministry of Economy (ME) hosted the first virtual Annual Meeting of the Brazilian-German Working Group Quality Infrastructure. Formerly scheduled to take place in Munich, Germany, the Working Group meeting was rearranged towards a special “online” design due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Based on topics suggested by companies and QI institutions from Brazil and Germany, both Ministries and Inmetro aligned their cooperation in the areas of standardisation, accreditation and conformity assessment as well as product safety and market surveillance for 2020 and 2021.
The Work Plan 2020-2021, signed by the occasion of the meeting, sets objectives for cooperation in strategic quality infrastructure areas such as good regulatory practices, framework conditions for industry 4.0 (e.g. international standards for machine-to-machine communication like OPC UA), cooperation on Industrial Security, risk assessment methodologies and overall cooperation on regulatory challenges.
A substantial growth of the German-Brazilian partnership
The conference was co-chaired by Dr Ole Janssen, Deputy Director General Innovation and Technology Policy from BMWi, Geanluca Lorenzon, Secretary for Competition Advocacy and Competitiveness (ME), as well as Marcos Heleno de Oliveira Jr, President of the Brazilian National Institute of Metrology, Quality and Technology (Inmetro).
During the meeting, Mr Lorenzon argued that it is very important to talk about the substantial growth of the German-Brazilian partnership - which is very important for Inmetro. All of this denotes Brazil's effort to achieve joint understandings about quality infrastructure and the desire to move towards integration into global value chains. He explained that Brazil is experiencing a “revolution” in the sense of modernising its regulatory practices.
MrOliveira, President of Inmetro, also emphasised Inmetro’s effort - with support from GPQI Brazil - regarding the modernisation of the Brazilian regulatory model. Due to Brazil’s aim to expand its participation in global value chains, the undergoing modernisation is essential to overcome global integration challenges.
Dr Janssen thanked both Inmetro and ME. He reiterated that in order to enhance economic development and productivity, it is crucial to establish well-coordinated Quality Infrastructure systems protecting consumers and promoting trade. This process is not always easy to establish. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the expectations for next year’s cooperation activities are high.