WELMEC

WELMEC is the European cooperation in the field of legal metrology. Its Members are representative national authorities responsible for legal metrology in European Union and European Free Trade Association (EFTA) member States.

WELMEC was created by the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) at a meeting in Bern in June 1990. Eighteen countries in the European Community and EFTA signed the original MoU, which set out objectives and tasks for WELMEC and identified rights and obligations arising from membership. Since 1990, several countries have joined WELMEC as Associate Members, one of a number of developments not foreseen when WELMEC was formed. To reflect these changes, and following extensive discussion during 1998 and 1999, a number of amendments to the MoU were agreed by the WELMEC Committee at its meeting in Warsaw in September 1999.

In May 2004 the ten new EU member countries Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia signed the MoU during the 20 th Committee meeting in Casta-Papiernicka, Slovakia.

The MoU is of an exclusively recommendatory nature, however, and does not in any way bind its signatories. WELMEC remains a free cooperation in which agreement is sought on a range of issues of mutual interest and wide importance.