While I am on this subject, I want to take this opportunity to thank the hard-working folks from the three CFDCs that serve my riding, namely the 1000 Islands Community Development Corporation that is based in Brockville; the Grenville Community Development Corporation, in Prescott; and the Valley Heartland Community Futures Development Corporation that is based in Smiths Falls.

For example, we provided assistance to the Société de développement Angus,which enabled the revitalization of an entire neighbourhood in eastern Montreal.

4. Asks the Commission nevertheless to inform Parliament why it chose not to include the following legislative initiatives in its 2007 work programme, as requested by its committees: mutual recognition in trade in goods, proposals to improve the CE mark, revision of the European Company Statute, the development of microcredits, reconciling work and family life, the protection of atypical workers, a new proposal on a European mutual society, thresholds for seeds containing GMOs, and a proposal on the Transparency Initiative;

To ensure the coherent development of the European Quarter, the Commission wishes to further promote inter-Institutional cooperation and stresses the need for the Belgian authorities to appoint a single counterpart with whom the European Institutions could develop a partnership on all issues relevant to the development of the European Quarter.

The European Union and its Member States – although not only them, but all international donors – should therefore review their cooperation methods and change the focus of their development policies so that capacity-building, as a participative process based on appropriation, constitutes the basis for the policy, with the aim of enabling individuals, as well as bodies within civil society, to develop their potential and the skills that should allow them to achieve the development objectives that they themselves must also be in a position to determine.

As a result: - transport policy must at all times be made to reconcile user demand and infrastructure development with environmental protection. This approach implies greater attention to issues such as business location and residential development and will, in consequence, have implications for land use planning. - the identification of the environmental impact of transport and related policy action is an integral part of future policy planning. This will necessitate close coordination of other policies for areas depending on transport policy, eg: strategic environment assessment of the TransEuropean network will be important for decisi ...[+++]ons about individual projects and actions to promote public transport. - in order to improve the impact of transport on the environment, a shift towards the more-environmentally friendly modes of transport eg: encouraging the shift of freight traffic from road to rail, will be actively pursued in the field of costs and charges, setting the regulatory framework, technical harmonisation and infrastructure.