3. Notes the clarification offered by the ECJ, in particular, that the timetable, although tight, observed the time-limits formally prescribed by the Financial Regulation; notes that the short deadline was caused by the need to award the contract at a date enabling the successful tenderer to be operational when the new building complex was delivered, as well as the necessity to provide for a sufficient time to allow the tenderers to prepare their tender;

At a very minimum, we believe that 18 months should be allowed before the Act applies to First Nations and preferably significantly longer.

- The second proposal is that there should be a five-year time-bar on the recovery of sums owed to the Community. This limit could be extended in cases where active steps are being taken to secure recovery. As things stand, there is no general time-limit of a ‘Community’ nature (such a limit exists in certain sectoral regulations e.g. those concerning the Staff Regulations: 5 years, the regulation on the protection of the communities’ financial interests: 4 years). However, there is interference with the national legislation, where the contract refers to national law or where the judge is a national one applying his own law as the law of ...[+++] procedure. This could give rise to total chaos in those Member States where institutions’ right to collect debts is time-barred (after 3 or 10 years), or where, quite simply, no information is given on whether the deadline has lapsed until the case comes before the judge. Nor is it clear whether after the period has elapsed it is possible to accept compensation or spontaneous payment by the debtor. In brief, this proposal would introduce legal certainty for both the institutions and the debtors.

directives should be speedily and correctly incorporated into the systems of the Member States; more focused and stringent checks on their implementation ought to be put in place by national governments; short deadlines should be set for the pre-litigation phase of the procedure for breach: the deadline for transposition should be clearly stated and should not be longer than two years, and this should also apply to a predefined deadline, to be set for the procedure’s end right from the outset;

If the application is refused, a redress period, which does not exist, should be provided and this must have a suspensory effect, enabling any attempt at the expulsion of the person to be blocked, in the name of the right to self-defence.

As such, the proposed amendments should provide for a grace period to allow businesses and their counsel with additional time to familiarize themselves with the Nice Classification system and the regulations to the act should provide for a clearly defined appeal process in the event of a dispute.