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Organization

The type of the organization should be a combination of no.1 and no.2 of question 8 in the questionnaire:

• Secretariat/Permanent organisation: Office in xxx (Brussels) with 1 secretary/cost controller and one co-ordinator,
• task experts for handling of customer requests in their relative home organisations representing the interests of all relevant partner organisations(Virtual Institute)

{+ Legal status of the organization: not-for-profit, charity-type such as an association, e.g according to Belgian law. The name of the new organization has to include HYSAFE to build on and benefit from the work already performed on hydrogen safety issues.

Comments: no unlimited liability, no common liability, no capital injection into the new organization as a stakeholder required. Joining and leaving is easy and does not require time consuming and expensive legal actions.

Set-up and operation: Contribution of the Commission shall be requested to run the infrastructure (Secretariat). The new organization should be attached to an existing infrastructure for cost reasons, at least in the beginning. Reasonable, differentiated membership fees. A Coordinator should be the first point of contact for incoming inquiries acting as a matchmaker for the member organizations to direct the inquiries to the member organizations according to the subject.

The results of the questionnaire are an ample source of preferred choices on many topics expressed by the HYSAFE members. The results have to become the backbone of the set-up and the mission statement of the new organization.+}

The organisational structure of the European Institute for Hydrogen Safety consists of the Institute's Governing Board, the Coordination Committee and the Management Office. The Management office consists of the Coordinator, his deputee, who should be one of the Cluster Leaders, and the secretary. The association is open for membership for hydrogen experts world wide. This Management Office in Brussels, as the only physical manifestation of HySafe, will provide the main lobbying, advertising and a part of the coordinating activities. It is responible for the internal and external information, administrates the financial affairs and maintains the website for further collaborations. With this background the lean structure should be mirrored in the legal form. An independent association or A German “Verein” provides in principle all (physical, non-physical and non-german members, easy accounting, non-profit entity, with many similar entities having also a “Verein” status)

The Coordinator and the secretary/cost-controller is employed by the association, either under a standard employment contract or under a service procurement agreement. The three Cluster leaders responsible for "Dissemination", "Experimental and numerical modelling" and "Risk Management" are elected for a two-year period.

 Because of this critical impact and unique chance offered via FP7 and the scheduled JTI for hydrogen and fuel cells the legal structure should be provided in the planning phase of FP7 (which actually has started already). The legal status simply makes it easier to act there as an entity and to further the visibility of the EHSC.