J. whereas lessons must be learned from the European Union's past failures in re-shaping its external action while enshrining human rights and democracy at the heart of its policies and promoting transition in countries with authoritarian regimes and de facto support for those regimes, in particular where stability and security concerns have compromised a principled policy of promoting democracy and human rights; whereas these failures have shown the need to redefine current EU instruments on the matter and establish new tools, such as the European Endowment for Democracy – an expert, proactive, lightly structured and thus cost-, decision- and response-effective tool at arm's length from the EU, capable of utilising in-depth knowledge and ...[+++] insights on the local situation in the countries of impact, through direct cooperation with local partners and twinnings between European and local partners, and also utilising, directly or through re-granting, resources from the EU, Member States and other sources to support civil society capacity for democratic opposition and political actors striving for democratic change in non-democratic countries and countries in transition, in a mutually safe and, where necessary, deniable manner;

J. whereas lessons must be learned from the European Union’s past failures in re-shaping its external action while enshrining human rights and democracy at the heart of its policies and promoting transition in countries with authoritarian regimes and de facto support for those regimes, in particular where stability and security concerns have compromised a principled policy of promoting democracy and human rights; whereas these failures have shown the need to redefine current EU instruments on the matter and establish new tools, such as the European Endowment for Democracy – an expert, proactive, lightly structured and thus cost-, decision- and response-effective tool at arm‘s length from the EU, capable of utilising in-depth knowledge and ...[+++]insights on the local situation in the countries of impact, through direct cooperation with local partners and twinnings between European and local partners, and also utilising, directly or through re-granting, resources from the EU, Member States and other sources to support civil society capacity for democratic opposition and political actors striving for democratic change in non-democratic countries and countries in transition, in a mutually safe and, where necessary, deniable manner;

In particular, SMEs are not always aware of the opportunities offered by public procurement markets, have limited resources to be able to participate in the standardisation process, or to take advantage of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), and have difficulty in complying with complicated and different tax systems .

In addition, when the Fundamental Rights Agency becomes operational, which is scheduled for January 2007, its activities and work, being an extension of the work done by the Vienna-based European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, should be used as input for the methodology.

RECOGNISING that, in the exercise of their sovereign rights over their plant genetic resources for food and agriculture, States may mutually benefit from the creation of an effective multilateral system for facilitated access to a negotiated selection of these resources and for the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from their use; and

On this issue, the report of the High Level Group on Fraud noted that, in addition to large-scale fraud by groups of organised criminals, there was also a significant amount of fraud by means of small-scale abuse of the current rules, which involves tax/duty-paid goods, and is the consequence of large differences in tax and duty rates between the Member States.