MEDA programme, Euro-Mediterranean partnership: economic and social structures

On the basis of a Presidency compromise, the Council examined the main items still pending for the revisions of the MEDA II Regulation and reached solutions on the following items: - abandoning a threshold for the examination of individual projects in return for a "power of retrieval" for Member States on all aspects of an annual financing plan, - direct budget aid concerning Strutural Adjustment Facilities; - the transmission by the Commission to the Member States financing conventions for information before their signatures; - the inclusion of a multiannual reference amount (still to be fixed); - the need for an opinion from the MED Committee on strategy documents; - the improvement of on-the-spot coordination between the Commission and the Member States; - the principle of an annual meeting of the MED Committee to discuss implementation of the Structural Adjustment Facilities; - an agreement in principle on a mechanism for release of dormant commitments ("sunset clause") that the Commission undertook to apply to all external aid programmes as of the 2001 budget; - a future examination in the more general context of the effectiveness of the Union's external aid of the possibility of entrusting the execution of certain projects to national agencies.�