High-level officials should be understood as persons who exercise key executive, administrative, legislative or judicial functions. Such functions can include actively participating in the development or execution of governmental functions, determining and implementing policies, enforcing laws, proposing or implementing legislation, adopting and implementing by-laws or normative decrees, taking decisions on government expenditure and taking decisions on the appointment of individuals to key executive, administrative, legislative or judicial functions, as well as deciding on court cases. High-level officials can include national officials such as heads of central and regional government, members of central and regional government, deputy ministers, state secretaries, key political advisers, heads and members of a minister’s private office or cabinet when such have been established, as well as members of parliamentary chambers, members of constitutional and supreme courts, the prosecutor general, and members of supreme audit institutions, as well as members of the College of Commissioners of the European Commission and the European Parliament.
Text as published in the Official Journal, reproduced verbatim (including any typographical quirks of the source). For the authentic version, see EUR-Lex.
