The starting point for discussions was the question of Community value added and the effectiveness of structural assistance looked at from several points of view:

Recent terrorist attacks have brought this into even greater focus, highlighting the urgent need for information systems to be interoperable, and to eliminate the current blind spots where terrorist suspects can be recorded in different, unconnected databases under different aliases.

The Commission's competition inquiry of 2009 into the pharmaceutical sector indicated a number of structural issues and problems in companies' practices that potentially lead to distortions of competition and delays to entry of new, innovative and cheaper generic medicines into the EU market (see IP/09/1098 and MEMO/09/321).

20. Stresses that horticulture is reliant on a variety of plant protection products (PPPs), and urges the Commission to take a risk-based approach to the regulation of these products that is justified by peer-reviewed, independent, scientific evidence; emphasises that minor uses are particularly vulnerable owing to the scarcity of the relevant active substances; calls on the Commission to strengthen the co-ordination of data generation across the Member States, in particular residues data, which is an essential requirement for authorisations on edible speciality crops; calls on DG Agri, DG Sanco, DG Environment and DG Competition to w ...[+++]ork together strategically to take into account the impact of changes to PPP regulation from multiple perspectives;