fa) six independent persons appointed by the Members of the General Board with voting rights on the proposal of the Joint Committee; the nominees must not be Members of the ESAs and shall be chosen on the basis of their general competence as well as for their diverse backgrounds in academic fields or other sectors, in particular in small and medium size enterprises, trade-unions or as providers or consumers of financial services; at the time of their nomination, the Joint Committee shall indicate which persons are designated also to serve on the Steering Committee; in carrying out their responsibilities, the persons nominated shall ne ...[+++]ither seek nor take instructions from any Government, institution, body, office, entity or private person; they shall refrain from any action incompatible with their duties or the performance of their tasks .

(fa) six independent persons appointed by the Members of the General Board with voting rights on the proposal of the Joint Committee; the nominees must not be Members of the ESAs and shall be chosen on the basis of their general competence as well as for their diverse backgrounds in academic fields or other sectors, in particular in small and medium size enterprises, trade-unions or as providers or consumers of financial services; at the time of their nomination, the Joint Committee shall indicate which persons are designated also to serve on the Steering Committee; in carrying out their responsibilities, the persons nominated shall n ...[+++]either seek nor take instructions from any Government, institution, body, office, entity or private person; they shall refrain from any action incompatible with their duties or the performance of their tasks.

These include the signing of a cooperation agreement between the Commission and the various stakeholders in the sector, the setting up of a steering committee for implementing this cooperation agreement, the adoption by the Commission of a Communication to the European Parliament and the Council on the deployment of the European rail signalling system ERTMS/ETCS, the appointment, by the Commission, of a European coordinator for the ERTMS project as a priority project of Community interest, the definition of the Agency's role as system authority in the context of the various a ...[+++]nnual work programmes, and the adoption of the ‘control-command and signalling’ TSI for conventional rail (7).

Within a period of 18 months from its creation, the Governing Board should select two or three KICs in areas that help the European Union to face current and future challenges, which could include such fields as climate change, renewable energy and the next generation of information and communication technologies.

Membership of the Governing Board should balance experience from the business and the higher education and/or research worlds as well as from the innovation sector.

The Commission has continued to play an active role in developing international guidelines, standards and recommendations in the relevant sectors and within established international forums such as UN-organisations, OECD, the Council of Europe Steering Committee on Bioethics.