Our structure

The General Assembly

The General Assembly is the highest decision-making body in ETSI. It is responsible for:
• Determining our overall policy and strategy
• Agreeing budgets
• Dealing with membership issues
• Appointing members of the ETSI Board
• Appointing the Director-General
• Appointing Finance Committee members
• Approving external agreements
• Approving changes to our Statutes and Rules of Procedure

Routine business and specific activities, including day-to-day management of our technical work, is delegated to the Board and to the Director-General.

The ETSI Directives provide full details about the role and responsibilities of the General Assembly.

Membership and meetings

All members of ETSI are members of the General Assembly and are invited to attend its meetings. Representatives of the European Commission (EC) and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) may attend as Counsellors. They offer valuable advice but have no right to vote.

GA officials

The Board

The Board is the executive arm of the General Assembly. The GA has delegated various day-to-day management tasks to the Board including:
• Overseeing our technical Work Programme
• Approving Terms of Reference (ToRs) for our Technical Groups
• Endorsing the appointment of Technical Group Chairs
• Approving resources and ToRs for Specialist Task Forces
• Advising the General Assembly on budget and finance matters.

The ETSI Directives provide full details about the role and responsibilities of the Board.

Board members

The Board comprises elected and ex-officio non-voting members. The Chair of the General Assembly, the Chair of the Finance Committee, the Chairs of the NSB and NSO Groups, the 3SI Advocate and the Director-General are ex-officio non-voting members.

Counsellors have the right to participate in Board meetings, without the right to vote.

The Secretariat

The Secretariat is headed by the Director-General and six Chief Executive Officers. About 150 multi-national staff comprising high level experts and engineers from different nationalities provide technical, administrative and logistical support for all our activities.

We are based at the Sophia Antipolis technology park in the south of France. Staff work in our purpose-built main headquarters building and the adjacent Einstein Building.

Jan Ellsberger
Director-General
ETSI

For contacts in the ETSI Secretariat please refer to our Contact us page.

The work of the Secretariat

• We support ETSI’s Technical Groups and host meetings.
• Our Centre for Testing and Interoperability provides support and assistance to the Technical Groups. It ensures standards are well-written, complete, clear, unambiguous and well structured.
• Our team of editing specialists assists with the processing, approval and publication of the standards drafted by our Technical Groups. The team also runs editHelp!, a dedicated service with practical aids for drafting standards.
• We provide communication services to ensure information on ETSI’s work is widely available.
• We organise workshops and events.
• We have relationships with external organisations and other standardisation organisations.
• We manage financial aspects, IT services, legal services and human resources.

ETSI DG’s external meetings calendar (EoL account required)