The various Leader programmes have encouraged rural development tailored to local needs. More than 60% of Europeans live in rural areas covering 90% of the land. Each community faces its own problems – and it's the people in those communities who are best placed to tackle them. That is the thinking behind Leader, designed to promote economic development in these areas through a grass-roots approach.
The Commission today adopted four decisions that significantly extend the Natura 2000 network in four biogeographical regions.Given the large natural variation in bio-diversity across the EU, the directive divides the Community into different so called bio-geographical regions: Atlantic, Continental, Alpine, Mediterranean, Boreal, Macaronesian and Pannonian. The decisions today concern the adoption of an initial list of Sites of Community Importance in the Pannonian region in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia and the updating of the existing lists in the Atlantic, Boreal and Continental biogeographical regions. Natura 2000 is an EU-wide network of nature protection areas established under the 1992 Habitats Directive (92/43/EEC). It is the centrepiece of EU nature & biodiversity policy.
In adopting its first-reading of the 2008 EU budget, MEPs want the overall amount of payment appropriations to be higher than in the Commission's preliminary draft budget (0.97%) and the Council's draft budget (0,95%), while not exceeding 0.99% of the EU's gross national income (GNI). They propose restoring the level of expenditure entered in the preliminary draft budget and making full use of the margins envisaged under the financial perspectives in several headings.
The EP wants to sharply increase the funding for Galileo, to appropriate additional funds for Palestine and for Kosovo. MEPs reinstate sums devoted to the Lisbon purposes (competitiveness, growth, employment) and the cohesion funding cut out by the Council. In the 2008 budget, for the first
Opening the October plenary session in Strasbourg, President Hans-Gert PÖTTERING said that the recent summit in Lisbon had been "very successful". The Reform Treaty gives the European Parliament more powers and makes co-decision the normal legislative decision making process. President Pöttering stated that he wished that the ratification processes would go smoothly so as they can be finished by 1 January 2009.
The European Commission adopted National Strategic Reference Frameworks (NSRFs) for all 27 Member States by 8 October 2007. A first, positive assessment confirms cohesion policy will make a decisive contribution to the strategy for growth and jobs over the period 2007-2013.
