Functions
The Authority takes on many of the roles performed by the European Commission within the EU, though only for the three EFTA EEA states and on a smaller scale. It also differs in that it does not propose new law or policy as the Commission does.
The primary task of the Authority is ensuring relevant EU law is properly transposed and enforced by EFTA states. If a state fails to do so, the Authority may resort to bringing the state to the EFTA Court. Secondly, the Authority ensures free competition, with the power to inspect and fine companies engaging in cartels or abusing their market position. This also extends to overseeing state aid to undertakings.
There are then further administrative tasks related to the approval of EFTA states decisions relating to areas such as banning harmful products or the recognition of driving licences. It also provides information and advice on interpreting and implementing the EEA agreement.
Read more about this topic: European Free Trade Association Surveillance Authority
Famous quotes containing the word functions:
“Adolescents, for all their self-involvement, are emerging from the self-centeredness of childhood. Their perception of other people has more depth. They are better equipped at appreciating others’ reasons for action, or the basis of others’ emotions. But this maturity functions in a piecemeal fashion. They show more understanding of their friends, but not of their teachers.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)
“Let us stop being afraid. Of our own thoughts, our own minds. Of madness, our own or others’. Stop being afraid of the mind itself, its astonishing functions and fandangos, its complications and simplifications, the wonderful operation of its machinery—more wonderful because it is not machinery at all or predictable.”
—Kate Millett (b. 1934)
“Nobody is so constituted as to be able to live everywhere and anywhere; and he who has great duties to perform, which lay claim to all his strength, has, in this respect, a very limited choice. The influence of climate upon the bodily functions ... extends so far, that a blunder in the choice of locality and climate is able not only to alienate a man from his actual duty, but also to withhold it from him altogether, so that he never even comes face to face with it.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)