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European Commission Spokesman's Briefing for 98-10-13
From: EUROPA, the European Commission Server at <http://europa.eu.int>
MIDDAY EXPRESS
News from the Spokesman's midday briefing
Nouvelles du rendez-vous de midi du Porte-Paroleb
13/10/98
CONTENTS / CONTENU
[01] Commission adopts annual report of the Cohesion Fund 1997
[02] Mario Monti : "Better regulation is crucial to sustainable employment"
[01] Commission adopts annual report of the Cohesion Fund 1997
The European Commission has adopted its Annual Report of the Cohesion Fund
for the year 1997. The report concentrates on how the four beneficiary
countries, Spain, Portugal, Greece and Ireland, have put the aid that has
been made available to them to use. It takes a close look at the
environmental and infrastructure strategies followed by these countries and
gives a detailed account of the projects put into action. Moreover, it
sheds light on the budget implementation in 1997 as well as on the
conditionality decisions taken for that year. One of the main findings of
the report is that there has been a growing number of environmental
projects. For the first time therefore the overall share-out of funds
between 1993 and 1997 has been nearly equal for the environmental and
infrastructure sector. Nevertheless, when it comes to specific countries,
Ireland especially, but also Spain and Portugal need to launch more
environmental projects. Another finding of the report is that in the field
of infrastructure the number of railprojects was significantly raised.
While the commitments from the Cohesion Fund for the railsector were at
just under 20% in 1993-96, the commitments in 1997 were more than 32%.
[02] Mario Monti : "Better regulation is crucial to sustainable employment"
"Improving legislation has a crucial role to play in the process of
creating and maintaining jobs" stressed European Commissioner for Single
Market and Taxation, Mario Monti, at a Conference organised by the Austrian
Presidency in Vienna on 13 October. The Commission has done its utmost to
simplify legislation of the European Union (EU), notably through the SLIM
initiative (Simpler Legislation for the Internal Market) which has
successfully been applied to a series of areas ranging from financial
services to collection of statistics, and through BEST (Business Test
Panel) aiming to assess the impact of the legislation on business before
the legislation is put forward. However, Member States are responsible for
the bulk of the regulatory framework for business. As the European
Councils in Luxembourg and Cardiff recognised, product, service, capital
and services markets need to be flexible and efficient if the full benefits
of the single currency are to be felt. Specific monitoring to improve the
regulatory environment at the national level will therefore be necessary.
"A change of culture in public administration, exchange of best practices,
visibility and transparency of the legislative framework : these must be
amongst the main priorities to be included in the multilateral surveillance
exercise established by the Cardiff European Council in view of reforming
the structural elements of the economy", said Mr Monti.
MIDDAY EXPRESS
From EUROPA, the European Commission Server at http://europa.eu.int/
© ECSC - EC - EAEC, Brussels-Luxembourg, 1995, 1996
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