Solidarity among the peoples of the European Union, economic and social progress and reinforced cohesion form part of the Community’s overall objectives of, ”reducing disparities between the levels of development of the various regions and the backwardness of the least favoured regions”, as laid down in the Treaty establishing the European Communities.

According to the most recent internal market indicator, however, there are still substantial delays in transposing internal market directives into national law, so that many Member States will fail to reach the target, set in Stockholm, of a transposition rate of 98.5% by the time of the Barcelona summit.

We never saw it as a report on suggesting how the hub and spoke system should work – the relay system for interpretation – nor, indeed, did we really have any thinking about the freelancing possibilities with modern communications where we can dispatch a large amount of our translation material to people who are in the Member States, rather than recruiting a whole range of people to come and work in Luxembourg as ...[+++]fixed and permanent employees of Parliament.

Moreover, this Council decision is part of the European growth initiative. The priority areas for action, which have already demonstrated their importance in underpinning the recovery in economic activity and employment and in facilitating the participation of European enterprises, in particular SMEs, in the large European market, are: - Improving the administrative and legal environment of enterprises, including in the field of indirect taxation, so as to reduce the costs imposed on SMEs by Community legislation (continuation of work on administrative simplification in conjunction with the Member States, assessment of the impact of Community legislation on enterprises, and improvement in the regular consultations with organizations represe ...[+++]nting SMEs); - Qualitative development of the Euro-Info-Centre (EIC) network: The principal task will be to improve the quality and relevance of information provided by the centres and to expand the network by strengthening the relay points of existing EICs and opening correspondence centres outside the Community; 1 COM(92) 470 final, 13 January 1993. - Qualitative development of confidential and non-confidential partner-search networks: The main aim will be to increase the capacity of the BRE networks (Business Cooperation Centre - non- confidential) and of the BC-Net (Business Cooperation Network - confidential) inside and outside the Community, to improve the quality of services provided and to intensify cooperation between the two networks; - Stepping up activities to put businessmen in direct contact with one another: This will involve continuing, improving and expanding the Europartenariat programmes (Objective 1 - regions whose development is lagging behind; Objective 2 - regions affected by industrial decline; Objective 5(b) - rural areas) and Interprise (all regions, with possible sectoral specialization) and to stimulate trans- national subcontracting following the Pan-European Forum on Subcontracting held in Madrid ...

Problem 1: Budget Cuts Problem 2: Capital Acquisitions Falling Behind. Problem 3: Overheated Operational Tempo Problem 4: Too Few Personnel – Too High Tempo Problem 5: Overdue Defence Policy Review Problem 6: Lack of Large-Scale Training Exercises Problem 7: The Slow Move to Wainwright

The greatest effort will be directed at the objective 1 regions (regions lagging behind): expenditure there will grow by around 67%, while the rate of growth for the other objectives will generally be 50%.