Community action programme Socrates: financial framework 1995-1999

In its common position on the modification of the Socrates programme, the Council has not accepted the proposal of the European Commission for allocating this programme an additional ECU 50 million for the period 1998-1999. It has merely agreed to a limited financial supplement of ECU 25 million, thereby providing the programme with a total budget of ECU 875 million. The Council considers that this allocation represents an equitable compromise between two contradictory demands: -on one hand, the need to increase the budget allocation for Socrates in order to make this programme more accessible to new users, - on the other, the need to pursue the objective of budgetary stringency, which is felt by a majority of the Member States. The Council accepts 5 of the 6 amendments approved by the European Parliament in first reading (in particular, a financial package sufficient to meet the needs of the Central and Eastern European countries and Cyprus, the maintenance of a critical mass of funding, incorporation of the additional Socrates funding under heading 3 of the financial perspectives, etc.). However, it does not accept the major amendment put forward by the European Parliament, namely the increased budget allocation of ECU 100 million instead of the 50 million proposed by the European Commission. �