84. Strongly supports the introduction of measures to increase the quality of higher education in Europe, inter alia by further reducing barriers to student mobility, improving the links between academia and business and fostering a more entrepreneurial mindset in society; proposes the introduction of a European innovation scholarship designed to contribute to the fostering of knowledge and skills employed in innovating sectors, while allowing the establishment of EU networks and cooperation; believes that such a scholarship would address youth in vocational educational programmes, established and specifically implemented in each of th ...[+++]e Member States;

First the consequences of the following decisions at European level, consequences that have not been thought through or anticipated: one, the quotation of the stock markets; two, the withdrawal of the institutional investors – the big banks and insurance companies – which will have been the first to make their profits, leaving the door open for what are called the hedge funds to be the main players on the European stock exchanges.

I said Europe’s stock exchanges because we in this Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs have for many years now been working for the construction, consolidation and integration of a European financial market, and I think the question we are faced with today is really whether or not there should be European stock exchanges.

- the oral question (O-0069/2006 B6-0317/2006) by Mrs Berès, on behalf of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, on mergers and acquisitions developments around Europe’s stock exchanges.

the first European Job Mart, to be organised simultaneously in nearly 100 European cities on 29-30 September 2006.

At the same time the pressures for consolidation and integration among European stock exchanges have remained and may even have been reinforced by the turmoil on the markets.