26. Welcomes the increase (+ EUR 5,7 million) in the overall level of commitment appropriations for the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework programme compared to what was initially foreseen; hopes that this increase will contribute to improving the access of SMEs to this programme and to developing specific programmes and innovative financial mechanisms; recalls, in this context, the key role played by SMEs in boosting the EU economy and supports, in particular, the CIP-EIP programme as an indispensable tool of recovery from the crisis; stresses the need to improve SMEs' access to capital markets and different EU financing opportunities by making funding procedures easier, quicker and less ...[+++] bureaucratic;

26. Welcomes the increase (+ EUR 5,7 million) in the overall level of commitment appropriations for the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework programme compared to what was initially foreseen; hopes that this increase will contribute to improving the access of SMEs to this programme and to developing specific programmes and innovative financial mechanisms; recalls, in this context, the key role played by SMEs in boosting the EU economy and supports, in particular, the CIP-EIP programme as an indispensable tool of recovery from the crisis; stresses the need to improve SMEs' access to capital markets and different EU financing opportunities by making funding procedures easier, quicker and less ...[+++] bureaucratic;

What I also feel is important—because I have benefited from it so much myself here in the House of Commons—is that career opportunities in Procedural Services enable people, once they have been appointed to the position of procedural clerk, to be assigned to various tasks at the same level but very different in nature.

Within these constraints, I feel that the process of public debt relief must be speeded up and stepped up, thereby enabling developing countries to allocate resources to basic services and, in so doing, to achieve the millennium development goals.

Some degree of standardisation in the preparation of programmes could be envisaged, the number of programmes could be reduced to make management easier and allow larger budgetary allocations.

- measures designed to reduce the burden of debt borne by certain ACP countries, not by cancelling the debts, but by establishing a system whereby the EU would redeem all or part of the debt, which would be repaid in local currency, i.e. not in hard currency, the repayments being channelled into an investment fund managed jointly by the EU and the ACP countries.