Commission Decision of 28 February 2006 setting up a group of high-level national regulatory experts (2006/210/EC)

Article 4 Operation

1. The group is chaired by the Commission.

2. In agreement with the Commission, sub-groups may be set up to examine specific questions under terms of reference established by the group; they shall be disbanded as soon as these have been fulfilled.

3. The Chair may invite experts with specialist knowledge of a topic entered on the agenda and observers, including acceding countries(1), to attend meetings of the group or sub-groups when this would be useful and/or necessary.

4. Information obtained by participating in the group’s or sub-group’s deliberations may not be divulged if the Commission requests confidentiality.

5. The group and its sub-groups shall normally meet in one of the locations where the Commission and its departments have premises, following the procedures and timetable laid down by it. The secretariat shall be provided by the Commission.

6. The group shall adopt its rules of procedure on the basis of the standard rules of procedure adopted by the Commission(2).

7. The Commission shall provide secretarial support for the group and any sub-groups created under Article 4(2) of this Decision.

8. The Commission may publish on the Internet, in the working language(s) of the group, any résumé, conclusion, or partial conclusion or working document of the group. The working documents shall be published in accordance with the availability of the different language versions.

(1)

Experts from acceding States having signed the Accession Treaty in accordance with the Communication ‘Towards the Enlarged Union — Strategy Paper and Report of the European Commission on the progress towards accession by each of the candidate countries’ of 9 October 2002 (COM(2002) 700 final) and with Article 7 of the Commission Decision C(2005) 874 of 24 March 2005, to reinforce the gradual integration of acceding countries into Community structures.

(2)

See Annex III of SEC(2005) 1004 adopted by the Commission on 27 July 2005.