[English] Mr. Ken Stein (Chair, Cultural Industries and Vice-President, Corporate and Regulatory Affairs Shaw Communications, Sectoral Advisory Group on International Trade for Cultural Industries): I'm Ken Stein, chairman of the Special Advisory Group on Trade and Culture, as it then existed, which came forward with the idea in the first place of proposing a cultural instrument to deal with trade issues and culture.

Framework Directive 89/391 foresees that each employer shall designate one or more workers to carry out activities related to the protection and prevention of occupational risks for the undertaking and/or establishment and that, if such protective and preventive measures cannot be organised for lack of competent personnel, the employer shall enlist competent external services or persons.

C. whereas external relations require specialised staff with a solid technical and diplomatic training and, despite the progress made by the Commission in training its officials to work in the field of external activities, the situation is still not satisfactory,

Training of Community officials assigned to work in the field of external activity and the contribution of the Member States' diplomatic services

It makes recommendations in three main areas: the training of officials assigned to external relations, the legal status of delegations and coordination with Member States.

–effective and transparent partnerships and collaboration with all actors, including major groups, should be established for implementation of the proposals for action in the IPF report; –comprehensive national forest programmes, including the aspect of capacity building, are an essential building block for sustainable forest management; –national, regional, subregional and international initiatives on forests, in particular those involving criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management, should be encouraged and promoted and the question of an international network of protected forest areas could be examined in the framewo ...[+++]rk of the future dialogue on forests; –long-term cooperation and coordination among international organizations and institutions, national organizations and major groups involved in forest-related issues is needed, including provisions for financial resources and technology transfer; –there is a need for further clarification of the issues arising from the IPF process related to international trade in forest products from all types of forests.