The Joint Undertaking is now seeking to attract additional members from across Europe (as well as countries associated to the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme ) that would be ready to commit, altogether, to a contribution of at least €200 million, with a view to achieving the ambitious objectives set out in the draft Shift2Rail strategic Master Plan, which was approved by the Governing Board of the Joint Undertaking on 24 September 2014 and will be submitted to the Council for endorsement.

This communication seeks to fulfil the Commission commitment to preserve "the open and neutral character of the internet, taking full account of the will of the co-legislators now to enshrine net neutrality as a policy objective and regulatory principle to be promoted by national regulatory authorities".

As the rapporteur emphasises, however, the Lisbon Agenda needs to take more account of common social objectives: the buzzword of our strategy should now be inclusion, and not just growth and employment.

This approach is designed to secure the continuation of the activities of the European distant water fleets while ensuring coherence between EU fisheries policy and EU environmental and development policies, in line with the Union’s international commitments. As a result, co-operation with our international partners is now focused on achieving sustainable fisheries beyond EU waters, based on scientific advice and application of the precautionary approach, in accordance with the general principles of the Common Fisheries Policy.

Once a set of common objectives have been laid down, a follow-up work programme and a timetable for the work should be defined.

Work will now concentrate on two main areas: - convergence: real progress has been made, with the inflation rate in the Union now down to 3%; nevertheless, further efforts are still needed to bring government deficits under control; the deficits themselves are not beyond control since they have to be trimmed by only 1.7 percentage points in two years, from 4.7% in 1995 to 3% in 1997; - the technical aspects of the preparations: after the considerable impetus given by the Madrid European Council in December, the Finance Ministers, at their meeting in Verona in April, reached agreement on two major aspects: relations between the "ins" and the "pre-ins", with recognition of the need for a new exchange-rate mechanism; and the budgetary stab ...[+++]ility pact, since everyone is in favour of guarding against excessive government deficits within the euro area, with a common objective of holding government deficits below 3%.