The Council's common position upholds either totally or partially a great majority of the European parliament's amendments (17 in total). The Council, however, introduced some important changes in the substance in comparison with the initial proposal. The common position is based on the following principles:
- the installation is broken up into sub-systems and safety components;
- the measures initially proposed regarding the installation would from now on apply to each sub-system;
- the safety components and the sub-systems may be placed on the market only if they comply with certain essential requirements specified in an annex to the Directive. The verification and the assessment of whether safety components and sub-systems comply with the essential requirements are to be carried out by independent organisations given this responsibility (the so-called 'notified bodies'). The 'EC' mark is introduced and only components bearing this mark can be considered as complying with the essential requirements.
- each Member State must lay down procedures for authorising the construction and the putting into service of complete cableway installations and their infrastructure.
With respect to comitology, the inclusion of a provision permitting the review of the type of committee (consultative committee) after two years of the Directive's application should be noted.�