A Certificate of Conformity as per the GOST – R certification system is a document issued on a special counterfeit-proof form to certify conformity of products to all safety requirements established for such products by national and international standards in force, e.g. GOST, GOST R, GOST ISO and GOST R IEC.
     A Certificate of Conformity can be issued for a certain lot of products / serial products. If a Certificate of Conformity is issued for a lot of products, the date of expiry of the certificate is open; if a Certificate of Conformity is issued for serial products, its validity period can vary from one to three years depending on the selected Product Certification Pattern. Both a manufacturer and a seller/importer of products can apply for certification.
     At present, the main regulatory document for mandatory certification is Enactment No. 982 of the RF Government dated December 1, 2009, which contains the established Uniform List of Products Subject to Compulsory Certification.
     Quite often a compulsory Certificate of Conformity is called a Quality Certificate; however it is an absolutely erroneous concept of certification: a Certificate of Conformity should rather be called a Certificate of Safety. A compulsory Certificate of Conformity confirms only safety of products but cannot guarantee their quality; this is because the main objective of compulsory product certification is to ensure safety, so the standards applied to compulsory certification primarily specify safety parameters.
     Voluntary certification is used to assess quality of one or another product; it allows checking of any product characteristics declared by the manufacturer.