The CC talks about five acceptable ways in which the CC components might not be used exactly as defined in the CC: iteration, assignment, selection, and refinement (all of which are listed in Part 1 Section 4.4.1), and extended requirements (which are addressed in Part 3 ASE_SRE); all of these require a justification for why the original CC words are not used. However, the CCRA acknowledges that there may be national interpretations. This raises the question of how to incorporate such national interpretations into PPs/STs such that they will be mutually-recognized. Within the originating scheme, there is no need to justify the new wording resulting from the national interpretation (in the same way that there is no need an ANY scheme to justify the new wording resulting from international interpretations): the new wording, in essence, replaces the text of the CC; only an acknowledgement of the the interpretation's existence is necessary, so that the reader will know whence came this new wording.

The problem arises in the area of national interpretations being recognized in the international arena. Given the five methods included in the CC, national interpretations could conceivably be incorporated as extended requirements; the justification could simply be that they are approved national interpretations by the original scheme. Of course this justification may seem trivial within the scheme that originally produced it.

It therefore seems appropriate to introduce a new acceptable way in which the CC components might not be used exactly as defined in the CC: the national interpretation. As with the other acceptable types of new wording, their inclusion must be readily apparent (by typeface, etc), so that the reader is immediately alerted to their existance. However, unlike other ways, there will be no need for justification within the PP/ST, because the originating scheme has presumably investigated the new wording sufficiently in accepting it as a national interpretation.

There therefore only remains a need to adjust the wording of the CC to accomodate this notion of the National Interpretation.

The notion of a National Interpretation could be included into the CC by making the following changes to the CC (and corresponding text in the CEM):

• Part 1, paragraphs 148-149 could be augmented to include it, including a note that no justification is necessary, other than to note that it is a national interpretation.
• Part 1, paragraph 157 could include it, with the note that justification is unnecessary; the current descriptions of Extended Requirements (item d) would have to be changed to explicitly state that justification is necessary.
• the SRE discussion in Part 3 could add a note describing why national interpretations are not extended requirements.