Legal Metrology:

The OIML and worldwide confidence in regulated measurements

Legal metrology comprises all activities for which legal requirements are prescribed on measurement, units of measurement, measuring instruments and methods of measurement, these activities being performed by or on behalf of governmental authorities, in order to ensure an appropriate level of credibility of measurement results in the national regulatory environment.

(Definition taken from OIML D 1 Elements for a Law on Metrology, 2004).

The OIML, International Organization of Legal Metrology (in French, Organisation Internationale de Métrologie Légale), is an intergovernmental treaty organization which develops model regulations/legislation for its membership. This membership includes Member States (which participate actively in technical activities) and Corresponding Members (which join the OIML as observers).

The Organization was established in 1955 to promote the global harmonization of legal metrology requirements and procedures. From the outset, the OIML’s main objective has been to develop a worldwide technical structure that provides:

• mutual information and confidence in each Member’s legal metrology structures,
• documents that provide harmonized requirements,
• guidance for the development and implementation of legal metrology regulations, and
• global systems for international certification and acceptance in legal metrology.
  
  

This work allows the OIML to contribute to the implementation of the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) Agreement. The OIML is an observer on the WTO TBT Committee, and also participates actively in the work of a large number of international and regional standardization and legal metrology organizations.

The BIML (OIML Headquarters) is based in Paris