Initial training shall cover the following subjects: aviation law, air traffic management, including procedures for civil-military cooperation, meteorology, navigation, aircraft and principles of flight, including an understanding between air traffic controller and pilot, human factors, equipment and systems, professional environment, safety and safety culture, safety management systems, unusual/emergency situations, degraded systems and linguistic knowledge, including radiotelephony phraseology.

The particular characteristics of air traffic in the Union call for the introduction and effective application of common competence standards for air traffic controllers employed by air navigation service providers providing air traffic management and air navigation services (ATM/ANS) to the public.

It is also appropriate to provide grants to the three legal support structures, the exclusive aim of which is to provide administrative support to the Committee of European Securities Regulators, established by Commission Decision 2009/77/EC (6), the Committee of European Banking Supervisors, established by Commission Decision 2009/78/EC (7) and the Committee of European Insurance and Pension Supervisors, established by Commission Decision 2009/79/EC (8) (together, the ‘Committees of Supervisors’), for carrying out their mandates and projects relating to supervisory convergence, in particular training of staff of national supervisory aut ...[+++]horities and management of information technology projects.

The managing authority, or the relevant controllers in the case of European territorial cooperation objective programmes, shall determine the size of the sample in order to achieve reasonable assurance as to the legality and regularity of the underlying transactions, having regard to the level of risk identified by the managing authority, or the relevant controllers as appropriate, for the type of beneficiaries and operations concerned.

1. Independently of the external audits of the Joint Managing Authority undertaken by the administration of the country in which the Joint Managing Authority is established, the Joint Managing Authority shall call upon an independent public body or contract an independent approved auditor who is a member of an internationally recognised supervisory body for statutory auditing to carry out each year an ex post verification of the revenue and expenditure presented by the Joint Managing Authority in its annual financial report, in accordance with the standards and ethics of the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC).

In view of the recent accounting scandals, special emphasis will be placed on the audit committee (or equivalent body), with a view to fostering the key role it should play in supervising the audit function, both in its external aspects (selecting the external auditor for appointment by shareholders, monitoring the relationship with the external auditor including non-audit fees if any) and its internal aspects (reviewing the accounting policies, and monitoring the internal audit procedures and the company's risk management system) [18].