9. Welcomes the fact that the EGF supported measures will be provided to workers by means of a labour foundation established as a part of the social plan which was agreed with the social partners; recalls that labour foundations are institutions set up by sectoral social partners in order to accompany workers in industrial change with training measures to enhance their employability; recalls, further, that this model of providing active labour market measures was very successful in the past regarding the reintegration of workers into the labour market and the use of the EGF funds ...[+++] for this purpose;

- In the aftermath of the collapse of Lehman Brothers in fall 2008, I coordi-nated, together with Jens Weidmann, who at that time was at the Chancel-lor’s office, the German government’s response to the financial crisis, in-cluding inter alia stabilizing the bank Hypo Real Estate (HRE), drafting the law on financial market stabilisation, setting up the Financial Markets Stabi-lisation Fund and – later – agency (SoFFin/FMSA) and becoming Chairman of its inter-ministerial st ...[+++]eering committee.

Key action Legislation setting up a European framework facilitating the development of social investment funds, which would scale up the impact of national initiatives by opening Single Market opportunities to them (access to investment opportunities and to investors from all Member States).

K. whereas preliminary studies undertaken by the World Bank indicate that increasing activities of pension and hedge funds had been key in the explosion of food and agricultural prices in 2008; whereas the exposure of food markets to financial speculation has risen enormously with funds betting 13 billion USD on rising agricultural commodities in 2003 and 318 billion USD in 2008,

– (ES) Mr President, Commissioner, I would first of all like to highlight the slow pace at which the programming for regional policy for 2000-2006 has been implemented in terms of the use of the Structural Funds and the Cohesion Fund and ISPA.

It should be added that on the basis of an evaluation of loans provided by the Facility and taking account of the outcome of the consultations held with our partners in the Barcelona process a decision on the incorporation of an EIB majority-owned subsidiary dedicated to our Mediterranean Partner Countries will be considered and taken one year after the launching of the Facility.