This Regulation lays down provisions concerning the assessment of monitoring plans and verification of emissions reports. It also lays down requirements in terms of competences and procedures.
This Regulation lays down rules on accreditation and supervision of verifiers by national accreditation bodies pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 765/2008.
For the purpose of this Regulation, the following definitions apply:
‘accreditation’ means attestation by a national accreditation body that a verifier meets the requirements of harmonised standards within the meaning of point (9) of Article 2 of Regulation (EC) No 765/2008 and the requirements of this Regulation and is thus qualified to carry out the verification activities pursuant to Chapter II;
‘non-conformity’ means one of the following:
for the purpose of assessing a monitoring plan, that the plan does not fulfil requirements under Articles 6 and 7 of Regulation (EU) 2015/757 and Implementing Regulation (EU) 2016/1927;
for the purpose of verifying an emissions report, that the CO2 emissions and other relevant information are not reported in line with the monitoring methodology described in a monitoring plan that an accredited verifier has assessed as satisfactory;
for the purpose of accreditation, any act or omission by the verifier that is contrary to requirements under Regulation (EU) 2015/757 and this Regulation;
‘reasonable assurance’ means a high but not absolute level of assurance, expressed positively in the verification statement, as to whether the emissions report subject to verification is free of material misstatements;
‘materiality level’ means the quantitative threshold or cut-off point above which the verifier considers misstatements, individually or taken together, to be material;
‘inherent risk’ means the susceptibility of a parameter in the emissions report to misstatements that could be material, individually or taken together, before taking into consideration the effect of any related control activities;
‘control risk’ means the susceptibility of a parameter in the emissions report to misstatements that could be material, individually or when taken together with other misstatements, and will not be prevented or detected and corrected on a timely basis by the control system;
‘detection risk’ means the risk of a verifier not detecting a material misstatement;
‘verification risk’ means the risk (a function of inherent, control and detection risk) of the verifier expressing an inappropriate verification opinion when the emissions report is not free of material misstatements;
‘misstatement’ means an omission, misrepresentation or error in the reported data, apart from the uncertainty permissible pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2015/757 and taking into consideration the guidelines developed by the Commission on these matters;
‘material misstatement’ means a misstatement that, in the opinion of the verifier, individually or when taken together with other misstatements, exceeds the materiality level or could otherwise, have an impact on the total reported emissions or other relevant information;
‘site’, for the purposes of assessing the monitoring plan or verifying the emissions report of a ship, means a location where the monitoring process is defined and managed, including locations where relevant data and information are controlled and stored;
‘internal verification documentation’ means all internal documentation that a verifier has compiled to record documentary evidence and justification of activities carried out to assess the monitoring plan or verify an emissions report pursuant to this Regulation;
‘shipping MRV auditor’ means an individual member of a verification team responsible for assessing a monitoring plan or verifying an emissions report;
‘independent reviewer’ means a person assigned by the verifier specifically to carry out internal review activities, who belongs to the same entity but has not carried out any of the verification activities subject to review;
‘technical expert’ means a person who provides detailed knowledge and expertise on a specific matter as required for the performance of verification activities for the purposes of Chapter II and accreditation activities for the purposes of Chapters IV and V;
‘assessor’ means a person assigned by a national accreditation body to assess a verifier pursuant to this Regulation, individually or as part of an assessment team;
‘lead assessor’ means an assessor who is given overall responsibility for the assessment of a verifier pursuant to this Regulation.
A verifier that demonstrates conformity with the criteria laid down in the relevant harmonised standards, within the meaning of Article 2(9) of Regulation (EC) No 765/2008, or parts thereof, the references of which have been published in the Official Journal of the European Union, shall be presumed to comply with the requirements of Chapters II and III of this Regulation in so far as the applicable harmonised standards cover those requirements.