The General Assembly
The General Assembly (GA) is the highest decision-making body in ETSI and is responsible for:
- Determining our overall policy and strategy
- Agreeing budgets
- Dealing with membership issues
- Appointing the members of the ETSI Board
- Appointing the ETSI Director-General
- Appointing the Finance Committee members
- Endorsing 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 ETSI Board.
The ETSI Directives provide full details about the role and responsibilities of the GA.
All members of the Institute have the right to appeal to:
- the General Assembly against any decision taken by the Board, or at the level of the Technical Committees, ETSI Projects, ETSI Partnership Projects, Special Committees, Industry Specifications Groups (ISG), Software Development Groups (SDG), and those Coordination Groups created by ETSI;
- the Board against any decision taken at the level of the Technical Committees, ETSI Projects, ETSI Partnership Projects, those Special Committees under the responsibility of the Board and those Coordination Groups created by ETSI.
All ISG or SDG Members, and ISG or SDG Participants, have the right to appeal to:
- The Director-General against any decision taken by an ISG or SDG Chair.
ETSI DG's external meetings calendar (EoL account required)
Membership and meetings
All members of ETSI are members of the GA and are invited to attend the 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
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| Bettina Funk Chair General Assembly ITS | Magnus Madfors Vice Chair General Assembly Ericsson LM | Sebastiano Toffaletti Vice Chair General Assembly DIGITAL SME |
The ETSI Board
The ETSI Board is the executive arm of the General Assembly (GA). The GA has delegated various day-to-day management tasks to the Board including:
- Overseeing our Work Programme
- Approving Terms of Reference (ToRs) for our technical committees, ETSI projects and Coordination groups
- Endorsing the appointment of technical committee chairs
- Approving resources and ToRs for Specialist or Testing Task Forces
- Advising the GA on budget and finance issues
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 ETSI Director-General is an ex-officio non-voting member.
The Chair of the General Assembly, the ETSI Counsellors, and the Finance Committee Chair shall have the right to participate in Board meetings, without the right to vote.
Board officials
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| Dr. Markus Mueck Chair Board Intel Deutschland GmbH | Nick Sampson Vice Chair Board Orange | Dr. Colin Willcock Vice Chair Board Nokia | Dr. Thomas Zielke Vice Chair Board BMWK |
The Secretariat
The Secretariat is headed by the Director-General and five Chief Executive Officers. About 120 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. The teams work in a purpose-built main headquarters building and the adjacent Einstein Building.
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| Jan Ellsberger DG ETSI |
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| Cécile Vasseur CFO Finance & Administration | Vincent Depagne CIO IT & Connectivity | Issam Toufik CTO Operations | Ultan Mulligan CSO Standardization Services | Anthony Brand CMO Marketing | Martin Chatel CPO Policy Affairs |
For contacts in the Secretariat please refer to our Contact us page.
The work of the Secretariat
- We support individual committees and projects
- Our Centre for Testing and Interoperability provides support and assistance to the technical committees. 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 committees. 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 available and known
- We host meetings of ETSI committees in the Secretariat
- We organize workshops and events
- We have relationships with external organizations such as the European Commission and other standardization organizations
- We also manage financial aspects, the IT services, legal services and our human resources