1. The body, its director and staff involved in conformity assessment tasks shall not be the designer, manufacturer, supplier, installer or user of the relevant instrument that they inspect, nor the authorised representative of any of them. In addition, they may not be directly involved in the design, manufacture, marketing or maintenance of the relevant instrument, nor represent the parties engaged in these activities. The preceding criterion does not, however, preclude in any way the possibility of exchanges of technical information between the manufacturer and the body for the purposes of conformity assessment.