2 TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS  2.1 General background 2.2 Scope and objectives In order to accomplish the task to strengthen laboratory-based surveillance, ECDC aims to  promote the harmonisation and the quality assessment of laboratory diagnostic methods used by  the European laboratory networks. ECDC coordinates External Quality Assessment (EQA) exercises  across public health microbiology laboratories with the objective to foster the quality and  comparability of the surveillance data reported to the European Surveillance System (TESSy), and  thereby promote threat detection capability for emerging and epidemic diseases in the European  Union (EU) and the European Economic Area (EEA).  In recent years, whole-genome sequencing (WGS) has become an ultimate typing tool to detect  and characterise FWD outbreaks with increased discriminatory power. It is expected that WGS will  eventually become the sole standard method for genotyping of FWD pathogens for public health  purposes. The “ECDC strategic framework for integration of molecular and genomic typing into  European surveillance and multi-country outbreak investigations for 2019-21” indicates the  selected FWD (Sa l m o n e l ae n t e r i c a, Shiga Toxin-producing E s ch e r i ch i ac o l i(STEC), and L i st e r i a m o n o cy t o g e n e s) for establishing operational EU-wide real-time surveillance systems, enhanced  by WGS. In 2019, ECDC extended its centralised data collection capabilities by implementing the  WGS data collection forL .m o n o cy t o g e n e s. Implementing routine sequence-based surveillance for  Salmonella and STEC continues according to the framework. This data is essential to support the  objectives of the molecular enhanced-surveillance for FWD including early detection of multi- country outbreaks to trigger outbreak investigations, and to monitor the spread of virulent strains.  Data analysis and interlaboratory comparability of WGS data can be challenging for the national  public health reference laboratories due to different methods and schemes used. To assess the  data quality produced in the laboratories and to support the high quality, comparable data  submissions to TESSy, this tender focuses on supporting analyses performed with relevant  molecular typing methods for the selected FWD pathogens. The EQA schemes should provide  important information on the laboratory performance capability at the European level and offer  opportunities to identify common sources of variation in the testing so that corrective trouble  shooting can be provided to the participants. Regular monitoring of results will allow the evaluation  of the progress and continuous capacity building. ECDC is now launching the second call for tender for an EQA scheme for molecular typing including  cluster detection by WGS for Sal mo n e l a, STEC and L .m o n o cy t o g e n e s with the purpose of  supporting the molecular enhanced -surveillance and outbreak investigations in the EU/EEA, and  to foster the quality and comparability of the surveillance data reported to TESSy.  The  scope  of this call is the provision of EQA schemes to support molecular typing-enhanced  surveillance of Sal mo n e l a(Lot 1), STEC (Lot 2) and L .m o n o cy t o g e n e s(Lot 3) (see section 2.1) The overall  objectives  of this call for tender are:  1. Improve harmonisation of the typing methods and typing capability within the public  health laboratories of the EU/EEA and the EU enlargement (candidate and potential  candidate) countries;  2. Promote production and submission of high quality molecular typing data to TESSy;  3. Provide support to laboratories failing to obtain correct results or facing issues; 7 