Social exclusion: Community action programme 2001-2005 to encourage cooperation between Member States

The Council adopted in full, in spirit if not in letter, 25 of the 31 amendments wholly or partly incorporated by the Commission in its amended proposal. The amendments involved relate in particular to the following issues: - adding "poverty" to "social exclusion"; - the need to make a decisive impact on the eradication of poverty by setting adequate targets; - drawing up of harmonised surveys and the establishment of common quantitative indicators to provide a basis for the development of the open method of co-ordination; - mentioning the fact that the fight against social exclusion and poverty requires participation in quality employment and access for all to resources, rights, goods and services; - the role given by the Lisbon and Feira European Council to the Social Protection Committee; - the taking into account non-governmental organisations at various levels as having experience and knowledge in fighting social exclusion and therefore being able to make an important contribution at European level ; - ensuring that coherence and complementarity of actions under the programme extends and applies to all other relevant Community instruments, policies and actions, in particular the Structural Funds; - the promotion of equality between men and women; - adding "poverty" and "promoting a dialogue with all those involved"; - adding "poverty" to the mention of "social dialogue"; - the promotion of support to relevant networking; - the regular co-operation that the Commission shall establish with the Social Protection Committee; - extending the list of the policies for which consistency nad complementarity will need to be ensured with regard to economic, industrial, enterprise policies, and immigration; - the reporting of progress of the programme in the Commission's annual summary report; - raising the importance of reflecting the experience on the grounds of persons confronted with social exclusion and poverty, making use of all the relevant sources of information on social exclusion and poverty, including information coming from NGOs and paying special attention to the multiple dimensions and the diverse situations of social groups affected including child poverty, and of the areas which are exposed to the risks of social exclusion; - adding technical work on indicators to the list of measures which may be supported by the Programme; - adding the possibility for the Programme to support fields visits, exchanges of staff and exchanges between national observatories or similar recognised bodies. Furthermore, the Council has introduced new provisions which provide in particular for special attention to be paid to social exclusion with a view to enlargement. On the other hand, the Council did not think it advisable to incorporate the recital referring to compatability between reference amount and the current finanical framework, as proposed by the European Parliament. �