Readiness Planning Assumptions for 1996-1997

21. Recalls the commitments made by the Government of Afghanistan at the International Afghanistan Conferences in Kabul and Tokyo to strengthen and improve Afghanistan’s electoral process, including through long-term electoral reform, in order to ensure that future elections meet international standards; welcomes the announcement of the date for the 2014 presidential and provincial council elections, along with Afghanistan’s preparations for those elections; stresses the need to mobilise participation, which may depend on the secur ...[+++]ity situation, especially in the southern and eastern provinces; reminds the Afghan authorities of the need for oversight by national and international observers of the national electoral roll and the organisation and monitoring of the voting process in the forthcoming elections; calls for the EU to provide support, at the request of the Afghan authorities, for the organisation of the forthcoming elections;

Notes that the existing EU Civil Protection Mechanism, as defined in Council Decision 2007/779/EC, is currently the appropriate instrument to deal with CBRN disasters, and stresses that this structure should be the forum where emergency decisions concerning CBRN disaster preparedness and response should be taken; notes, however, that in order to achieve this goal and to ensure proper prevention and detection, cooperation must be established with civil protection bodies, with the intelligence and law-enforcement authorities, as well as with security-service, military information and response centres in each of the Member States and at EU ...[+++] level, such as the Civilian Planning and Conduct Capability (CPCC) of the Political and Security Committee (PSC) and the Joint Situation Centre (SitCen); recalls, further, the role of the Standing Committee on Operational Cooperation on Internal Security (COSI), which is tasked with facilitating, promoting and strengthening operational cooperation among the relevant national authorities of the Member States in the field of internal security;

The preparations for the EULEX mission would not have succeeded without the establishment of an EU planning team with its own budget, through which it was possible to finance the deployment of a significant number of the personnel required for the planning phase as well as the initial deployment of the mission itself.

In order to assist enterprises in their changeover preparations, the NECC has published a "Euro changeover checklist for business organisations", complemented by a toolkit for retailers containing information on the planning and implementation of the retailers' changeover preparations, a euro converter and a conversion chart, thereby setting examples of good practice.