Community action programme 'Socrates'

Since the comitology problem had been resolved by the compromise on a ‘modus vivendi’, which had been adopted by the three institutions on 20 December 1994, the President of the Council proposed that they reach agreement on the amounts deemed necessary (ADN), pending Coreper’s completion of its work on the horizontal problem in the next few days. The EP delegation, noting the presence of all of the Coreper members, felt that this proposal was irresponsible and refused to discuss the amounts without a prior agreement on the joint declaration. Following the meeting, Mr SAMLAND provided the Council with details of the Committee on Budget’s intentions in this respect, which should have put an end to its reservations. Having therefore decided on the legal significance of the amounts to be allocated, agreement was reached on an amount of ECU 850 million in a declaration to be published in the OJ stipulating that the Socrates programme would be revised after two years of implementation. As the German delegation in the Council was still hesitant, informal, unilateral talks were held and they resulted in an announcement by the co-chairmen on 31 January 1995 that the Committee had agreed on a joint text.