Recital 107

In order to ensure the application and enforcement of this Regulation, Member States should designate one or more competent authorities. If a Member State designates more than one competent authority, it should also designate from among them a data coordinator. Competent authorities should cooperate with each other. Through the exercise of their powers of investigation in accordance with applicable national procedures, competent authorities should be able to search for and obtain information, in particular in relation to the activities of entities within their competence and, including in the context of joint investigations, with due regard to the fact that oversight and enforcement measures concerning an entity under the competence of another Member State should be adopted by the competent authority of that other Member State, where relevant, in accordance with the procedures relating to cross-border cooperation. Competent authorities should assist each other in a timely manner, in particular when a competent authority in a Member State holds relevant information for an investigation carried out by the competent authorities in other Member States, or is able to gather such information to which the competent authorities in the Member State where the entity is established do not have access. Competent authorities and data coordinators should be identified in a public register maintained by the Commission. The data coordinator could be an additional means for facilitating cooperation in cross-border situations, such as when a competent authority from a given Member State does not know which authority it should approach in the data coordinator’s Member State, for example where the case is related to more than one competent authority or sector. The data coordinator should act, inter alia, as a single point of contact for all issues related to the application of this Regulation. Where no data coordinator has been designated, the competent authority should assume the tasks assigned to the data coordinator under this Regulation. The authorities responsible for the supervision of compliance with data protection law and competent authorities designated under Union or national law should be responsible for the application of this Regulation in their areas of competence. In order to avoid conflicts of interest, the competent authorities responsible for the application and enforcement of this Regulation in the area of making data available following a request on the basis of an exceptional need should not benefit from the right to submit such a request.