I am just looking at a local supermarket paper receipt: on its backside, together with the paper manufacturer’s logo, there is also a three-letters logo, meaning that – somehow – the forests from which the wood to make that paper is identified. 

Please raise your hand if you know what forest stewardship stands for, and what forests, and trees, produce the oxygen we need to breathe.

Pity that banks’ paper receipts do not remind us of such an important message.

VALUE OF CERTIFICATIONS
This makes me think that unless Certification is a child born of itself, which would be quite unnatural, in general terms Certification’s parents can be categorized as follows:

One: a father, who can be connected to Market’s sales pressures;

Two: a mother, who can be connected to Consumers’ requirements for product and / or Producer reliability.

Certainly, when one buys a car which logo begins with a double R (Rolls Royce) does not care much for any certification; and it would be just the same, that is “certification equals paperwork”, when any wealthy oil-man buys himself a personal jet.

But we are concerned, instead, with a vision that is likely to rob the western employees markets of tens  – when not hundreds – thousands units.

Italy got a 1.5 bilion euros credit from the Brussels Parliament to revamp the youth unemployment; on the same day, a leading italian company, manufacturing sofas announced it will shut down its key plants – some 1,650 employees – because labor cost in Romania is one fifth – ONE FIFTH – than Italy.

Have you ever been in Romania but for holiday?

My wife is croatian and, believe me, once you leave the coastal touristic places and drive deep into the croatian homeland, you do surely find nice people but – may Luck be with you – if you do not speak croatian language, you would be utterly lost.

And you are in civilized Europe …

THE CERTIFICATION CONUNDRUM
Certainly, countries like these are low-labor-cost paradises for manufacturing companies; but when it comes to social or moral issues, we double-faced westerners suspiciously look at Serbia or Turkey or Croatia, before admitting them to the EU’s Olympus.

Let us look once more to what we expect, we need, or we want from a certification.

First of all, let us admit to ourselves that we are very confused.  We want products to be certified, whatever the product, and we want people to be certified; especially the people our life depends on.

We demand, we expect, we want but we do not invest – we do no start nor ignite our engines, Gentlemen.

Second: What do we need to to make sure that the people our life depends on are under our control?

It is about the cars drivers’ life, it is not just a question of showing a brand on TV.

Third: Mankind has gone – and will keep going – a long way on the road to certainty. Some think that certainty equals utopia, they can be right.  Whatever the rock or the hill we view from, the dilemma seems to be: “who – reliably – controls the controller ?” seems to have no way out.

Unless …

Unless “words are not just words”.