38. Notes that there has been no progress in the negotiations for the purchase of the WIC and SDM buildings in Strasbourg; expects that, should negotiations be resumed, the final package agreed upon should give value for money to the Institution; decides, pending the outcome of these negotiations, not to enter EUR 50 000 000 under Item 2003, and to transfer this amount to a building reserve to be created under Title 10 (Chapter 10 5 -Provisional appropriation for buildings); decides, consequently, to delete Item 2009 (“provisional appropriation to cover the institution’s property investments”); the fund put in reserve will be release ...[+++]d once a set of conditions to be formulated has been satisfied; requests that the criteria for the release of the reserve be agreed with the relevant committee; expects that by 1st September the Bureau will come back with concrete proposals on this matter;

For those un-banked benefit recipients who do not even want a basic bank account available through post offices and prefer to have recourse to the old system of cash payments at the post offices, a new simplified Post Office Card account (POCA) will be offered with the only apparent difference that a magnetic stripe card will replace the previous paper-based passbooks and giro-cheques.