– Mr President, I asked the Commissioner a very clear question: at the moment there is unrest in my country, a big news report on a mission of the Commission agreeing to the export of so-called secondary resources such as old paper, recycling material, etc.

While the Commission recognises the environmental benefit of recycling waste paper, the use of recycled fibre for the production of newsprint appears to be an increasingly common business practice in the paper industry.

11. Strongly agrees on the need to raise participation in the labour market, in particular amongst older workers, vulnerable groups and women; warns against the fact that many Member States seem not to be ready to implement the directive on equal access to the work place, despite the three-year period for transposition; calls on the Commission to take action and to monitor closely transposition of the two EU directives to combat discrimination based on sex, racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation;

Just to try to explain how many things a Presidency has to do, I will tell you what we have done: we have held over 42 meetings with government representatives of Community countries and candidate countries; we have ended several old disputes which no previous Presidency had resolved; we have chaired 26 Ministerial Council meetings, along with all the work also required from the President-in-Office personally in preparing for these European Councils in the various sectors and in coordinating the Councils themselves; we have adopted 17 regulations and directives; we have concluded three conciliation procedures with the European Parliament, which had been ongoing for some time; we have concluded or signed seven international agreements; ...[+++] we have begun the technical review of the texts adopted by the Convention – all of this involves numerous sittings, and almost always at night, what is more, for the President-in-Office; we have held eight Association and Cooperation Councils, including Armenia, Georgia, Jordan, Tunisia and so on; we have had 10 summits and troikas, and moreover, this very week I am going to China; we have held 30 COREPER meetings, along with all the preparatory meetings; we have had 15 working meetings with representatives of the United States, Russia, the Balkans, Latin America and other countries; lastly, we have held over 800 Council working group meetings.

In view of recycling commitments the company has accepted, the Commission decided that the aid would facilitate the development of waste paper recycling without adversely affecting trading conditions to an extent contrary to the common interest.

Six projects are industrial, covering clean technologies (industrial washing of linen using ozone and recycling of drain water), waste (treatment of waste papers using ozone for the production of white paper, regeneration and recycling of foundry sand by mechanical treatment, and collection, treatment and recycling of spent catalysts in car exhausts), water (production of demineralised water from river water using membranes separation technology) and soils (remediation of chromium contaminated soils).