15. Establishes from the AAR that with regards to the negotiation and start of RD projects, some delay was recorded in the delivery of the "production environment" for the Joint Undertaking contract negotiations due to some change of priority in the Commission's services responsible for the management of the FP7 IT tools; takes note from the Joint Undertaking that the technical delay is under control and that a fully operational production environment was expected to be delivered by mid-January 2011; notes, however, that as a mitiga ...[+++]ting action to prevent further delays in the Joint Undertaking contract negotiations, a back-up solution based on manual processing is in place that would allow the closure of all negotiations in the first quarter 2011 (assuming that National contracts are signed), in case the IT tools were not yet ready;

Where a bus or coach service is cancelled or delayed for more than 120 minutes or overbooked, passengers shall immediately be offered the choice between continuation of the journey or re-routing to their final destination at no additional cost or reimbursement of the ticket price; if the carrier fails to offer this choice, passengers shall have the right to compensation amounting to 50% of the ticket price, in addition to the reimbursement of the ticket price.

Flight Rights Canada’s code of conduct of Canada’s airlines prescribes that carriers should: inform passengers about changes to flight times and schedule changes, and the reasons for any delays; provide alternate transportation or a refund to passengers if a flight is cancelled or overbooked; provide meal vouchers to passengers who are delayed by more than four hours, and hotel accommodation if the delay exceeds 8 hours; and provide passengers with opportunity to disembark from the aircraft after 90 minutes if the delay has occurred while the passenger is in the aircraft, if it is safe, timely and practical to do so.

The Committee on International Trade, having observed how far behind the European Union is in both the consumption and production of biofuels, has proposed that we increase imports, which is quite natural, but also that we focus more closely on European industrial production, with the dual aim of achieving energy independence for the EU and of providing outlets for agricultural crops such as sugar-producing plants.

To conclude, I wish to state that, in addition to the importance of plant proteins in the European Union’s food production chain, we must stress the strategic importance of these crops in the European Union’s Mediterranean areas, where the choice of crops is limited, and where, above all, there are few crops that provide farmers with options, but where these particular crops adapt very well to the unproductive land and the predominant soil in these areas, which is poor, limited and marginal.

Reasons for delays, some of which are entirely beyond the control of the Commission, are manifold: political controversies at the level of the central institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina have often led to long delays in the decisions on which projects should be carried out on a priority basis.