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1. Member States shall, in close cooperation with the Commission, establish a permanent cooperation framework enabling their respective safety investigation authorities to cooperate with each other to the extent necessary to attain the objectives of this Directive.

2. The rules of procedure of the permanent cooperation framework and the organisation arrangements required therefor shall be decided in accordance with the regulatory procedure referred to in Article 19(2).

3. Within the permanent cooperation framework, the safety investigation authorities shall agree, in particular, upon the best modalities of cooperation in order to:

(a) enable safety investigation authorities to share installations, facilities and equipment for the technical investigation of wreckage and ship’s equipment and other objects relevant to the safety investigations, including the extraction and evaluation of information from VDRs or S-VDRs and other electronic devices;

(b) provide each other with the technical cooperation or expertise needed to undertake specific tasks;

(c) acquire and share information relevant for analysing casualty data and making appropriate safety recommendations at Community level;

(d) draw up common principles for the follow-up of safety recommendations and for the adaptation of investigative methods to the development of technical and scientific progress;

(e) manage appropriately the early alerts referred to in Article 16;

(f) establish confidentiality rules for the sharing, in the respect of national rules, of witness evidence and the processing of data and other records referred to in Article 9, including in relations with third countries;

(g) organise, where appropriate, relevant training activities for individual investigators;

(h) promote cooperation with the safety investigation authorities of third countries and with the international maritime accidents investigation organisations in the fields covered by this Directive;

(i) provide safety investigation authorities conducting safety investigations with any pertinent information.