Accreditation, certification, qualification: telling them apart

“We are a State-approved and accredited body.” You see that sentence every week on French training, consulting and inspection websites. It is almost always wrong — and it backfires, because a public buyer, a funder or an auditor spots the inaccuracy in a second. Accreditation, certification, qualification, approval (agrément), label: these five words designate five different things, issued by different actors, to different recipients. Here is the grid, and what it changes for your communication.

The chain of trust, floor by floor

Picture a three-storey pyramid.

At the bottom, the object assessed: a company, a training provider, a product, a service, a person. Usually you.

In the middle, the conformity assessment body: the one that delivers the verdict. Certification body, testing laboratory, inspection body. It issues a certificate, a report, a record.

At the top, the accreditation body: the one that checks that the middle floor is competent, impartial and independent. In France, that is Cofrac, designated by Decree no. 2008-1401 of 19 December 2008 as the sole national accreditation body, under European Regulation (EC) No 765/2008.

The rule fits in five words: you are certified by an accredited body. Accreditation never travels down a floor. It qualifies the assessor, not the assessed.

The five words, one by one

Certification

Certification attests that an organisation, a product, a service, a process or a person conforms to an identified standard. It is issued by a third party, after an audit or an examination, for a set period.

Examples: a training provider is certified under Qualiopi for one or more categories of activity; a company is certified to ISO 9001; an asbestos-removal operator is certified against the applicable scheme.

Accreditation

Accreditation attests that the body issuing a certification — or performing a test, an inspection, a calibration — is competent, impartial and independent to do so. It is issued by Cofrac, against a precise international standard (see our guide to which standard applies to which body).

A certification body is accredited; the company it certifies is not.

Qualification

Qualification attests that a company has the means and the references needed to carry out a type of work or service. It is widespread in French construction, engineering and technical services, and rests on a file review — staff, equipment, financial capacity, project references.

The nuance with certification is real: qualification looks first at what a company is able to do, whereas certification verifies that a process or object conforms to a standard. Bodies issuing qualifications may themselves be accredited, which brings the two worlds closer without merging them.

Approval (agrément) and authorisation

An agrément is a decision by a public authority — ministry, prefecture, departmental directorate, agency — authorising an activity or granting its clients an advantage. It is administrative by nature: you apply to an administration, not to a private body.

It is the most misused word. Writing “State-approved” when you are merely certified by an accredited private body is a misleading claim, and one of the classic weak points in public information about your services.

Label

A label is a collective mark, run by a federation, an association or a local authority, distinguishing a practice or a commitment. Some labels rest on a demanding standard and a third-party audit; others on a simple declarative charter. The word itself therefore says nothing about the level of guarantee: you have to look at who awards it, and on what evidence.

Why this precision matters economically

This may look like a quarrel about words. It is in fact a question of signal value. Signalling theory explains it: a certificate is only worth something if obtaining it is genuinely costly and if the buyer believes in the strictness of whoever issued it. Ann Terlaak and Andrew King, in a study published in 2006 in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, tracked an eleven-year panel of US manufacturing facilities: certified sites grow faster after certification, and this effect is not explained by operational gains — it is stronger where buyers find it harder to get information about their suppliers (see the study). In other words, the certificate is worth the information it conveys.

Loose vocabulary destroys exactly that information. If everyone calls themselves “accredited”, the word stops distinguishing anything, and buyers fall back on their own checks. Conversely, a supplier who states precisely what they hold — and can show the matching certificate — stands out effortlessly.

The three-question test

Before using one of these words on your website, your brochure or a tender response, ask three questions.

1. Who issued the document? An administration → agrément or authorisation. A private third party → certification or qualification. Cofrac → accreditation. A federation or local authority → label.

2. What does it cover? You (your organisation, product, people) → you are certified, qualified, approved or labelled. The body that assessed you → that body is accredited, not you.

3. What exactly is its perimeter? A certificate covers only the activities and sites it names; an accreditation covers only its declared scope. Vague phrases such as “quality certified”, with no standard and no perimeter, add nothing and invite questions.

The special case of training providers

This is where the confusion runs deepest. Here is the full chain:

Level	Who	What
Training provider	You	Certified under Qualiopi for your categories of activity
Certification body	Your certifier	Accredited against the national quality standard under NF EN ISO/IEC 17065
Accreditation body	Cofrac	Designated by the State, signatory to the European and international arrangements

Three practical consequences:

• You are certified, never accredited nor State-approved. Your activity declaration with the administration is neither: it is a registration, as our comparison of the activity declaration number and Qualiopi explains.
• Your certifier must be accredited and appear on the official list of authorised bodies: the checking method is set out in our guide to reading a scope of accreditation.
• Whoever helps you prepare cannot be the one who certifies you: the impartiality requirements of ISO/IEC 17065 forbid it.

Take action

Reread your “About” and “Our certifications” pages today with the three-question grid: who issued it, what it covers, what perimeter. Correct every occurrence of “accredited” or “approved” that does not match reality — an hour’s work that removes a weak point in audits and tenders alike. To understand the top floor of the chain in detail, see our page on Cofrac accreditation.