General obligations of competent authorities
Article 41
Competent authorities shall: (a) have procedures or arrangements, or both, in place to ensure and verify the effectiveness, appropriateness, impartiality, quality and consistency of the official controls and of the other official activities that they perform; (b) have procedures or arrangements, or both, in place to ensure that their staff performing official controls and other official activities are free from any conflict of interest as regards the operators in respect of which they perform those official controls and other official activities; (c) have, or have access to, a sufficient number of suitably qualified, trained and experienced staff so that official controls and other official activities can be performed efficiently and effectively; (d) have appropriate and properly maintained facilities and equipment to ensure that their staff can perform official controls and other official activities efficiently and effectively; (e) have the legal powers to perform official controls and other official activities and to take the action provided for in this Regulation; (f) have legal procedures in place in order to ensure that their staff have access to the premises of, and documents and computerised information management systems kept by, operators so as to be able to carry out their tasks properly.