16. Encourages institutional shareholders to engage in a dialogue with financial institutions on improving corporate governance and risk management with a view to the long-term viability of the financial institution; believes that ‘comply or explain’ approaches in the form of guidelines have failed as a useful means of avoiding financial crises and have proved to be ineffective, and that binding rules need to be at the core of corporate governance regulation, complemented by soft regulation such as an international code of best pract ...[+++]ice;

According to the MoU, measures on public enterprises are taken with the aim of fighting waste and mismanagement in state-owned companies, reducing their costs and improving their financial performance.

Currently, the Commission's services are reviewing the school milk scheme in view of simplifying its management and enlarging the list of beneficiaries and eligible products.

14. Calls on the Member States, in view of the rising costs of health care, to take reinforced measures - such as the use of new technologies, targeted information campaigns, efficient health service management, expansion of reference centres or cross-border cooperation - aimed at delivering high-quality health care for all now and in future and at the same time securing cost savings in the medium term; and urges the Member States and the Commission to issue guidelines after consulting industry and patient groups to provide equal access for all to medicines and medical products and furthermore to take into consideration that health care costs could be reduced not only by government action ...[+++], but also by greater solidarity between generations and in families and mutual assistance measures at local level;

Sound management of public finances is essential for sustainable economic growth.

22. Calls on the Commission to prepare proposals for the introduction of rules and codes of conduct aimed at preventing and avoiding conflict of interest for public authorities whose activities are susceptible to private-sector interests (in such areas as media ownership, award of public concessions, etc), and to draw up guidelines on conflict of interest, on the lines of the those set out by the OECD in its recommendation of June 2003 on guidelines for managing conflict of interest in the public service;