Community action programme 1997-1998 in the fields of books and reading, ARIANE

In its opinion following Parliament's second reading on the ARIANE programme, the Commission stated that it was willing to incorporate in full or in part 6 of the 8 amendments approved by the European Parliament at second reading. The amendments accepted seek to: - insert a reference in the assessment report to the impact of the programme on the dissemination of literature in the less-widely used languages; - make works in less-widely used languages eligible without having been previously translated into one of the Community languages; - make projects which seek to create data banks and data bases eligible; - give priority to small, independent publishers; - delete, with regard to the distribution of resources, the reference to the double procedure (advisory and management committee). It accepted in part the change to the committee provided for by the Council and therefore recommended that the management committee be used for granting financial assistance to projects of more than ECU 10,000 and that a different committee procedure be used when adopting assessment reports. However, it rejected amendments seeking to: - change the title of the decision (referring explicitly to translation); - increase the budget for ARIANE (ECU 10.5 million instead of ECU 7 million).�