WRITTEN QUESTION No. 938/98 by Arthur NEWENS to the Commission. Relaunching of Med-Urbs, Med-Campus and Med- Media Programmes
Date: 1998-03-16
Institutions: European Parliament, NEWENS
Subjects: EU programme, Mediterranean region (EU), administrative transparency, budgetary control, financing of aid, report

C 354/42

EN

Official Journal of the European Communities

19. 11. 98

As  long  ago  as  1995,  the  reform  of  market  organisation  for  rice  sought  to  make  Community  rice  more
competitive by gradually reducing the intervention price over three marketing years and raising the quality of
Community production through stricter criteria for rice bought by the intervention agencies and changes to the
standard quality criteria. The Council fixed a limit on imports of rice originating in the overseas countries and
territories (OCT) which enters the Community duty-free.

The Commission has taken and will continue to take all possible measures to support market prices and, as far as
possible, to avoid having recourse to intervention. Thus the limits on exports with refund set by the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) for this marketing year have been reached and considerable quantities
of rice are being provided as aid to the most deprived in the Community, all possible ways of carrying out food
aid operations have been used and ways of carrying out other food aid operations are being studied. All these
measures are designed to improve the situation on the rice market and to reduce purchases by the intervention
agencies as much as possible.

(98/C 354/77)

WRITTEN QUESTION P-0938/98

by Arthur Newens (PSE) to the Commission

(16 March 1998)

Subject: Relaunching of Med-Urbs, Med-Campus and Med-Media Programmes

Repeated assurances have been given by the Commission that the Med Programmes are about to be re-launched,
according to the last communication I received from the Commission (cid:145)early in 1998(cid:146). Some organisations, such
as  the  London  Borough  of  Islington  in  my  constituency,  had  projects  approved  in  1995  and  have  invested
considerable  resources  in  maintaining  the  relevant  networks  underpinning  them,  so  that  they  could  be
re-activated when the Programmes were re-launched. Can the Commission give any clear indication of when this
will happen?

Answer given by Mr Mar(cid:14)·n on behalf of the Commission

(8 April 1998)

On 17 July 1997 (1) the Parliament adopted a resolution based on a report presented in the budgetary control
commission by Mr Fabra Valle‘s. In this resolution, Parliament requested the Commission to present, within six
months, a report on the measures taken to remedy the deficiencies affecting the management and implementation
of the Mediterranean decentralised cooperation programmes as highlighted in the special report (1/96) of the
Court of auditors. The resolution also requested the Commission to submit to the Parliament the new measures it
intended to put in place for the relaunch of these programmes in 1998.

This  report,  transmitted  to  the  Parliament  in  January  1998,  responds  in  the  view  of  the  Commission  to  the
recommendations  formulated  by  the  Parliament  in  its  resolution.  Parliament  has  acknowledged  it  through  its
commission of budgetary control.

The Commission is now prepared, during the second quarter of this year, to relaunch the three Mediterranean
decentralised cooperation programmes. The relaunch, taking into account the new measures which have been
adopted, will address in the first place those projects which were already earmarked following the 1995 call for
proposals for these three programmes.

(1)  PE 260.948/103.