Brussels, 19/12/2014 (Agence Europe) - Commissioner Corina Cretu has been true to her word, having this year again approved half the operational programmes on time. She had been encouraged to speed up the adoption of the programmes so that the structural funds for the 2014-2020 funding period could be brought into play. On Friday 19 December, 148 of the 311 programmes submitted by the member states had been adopted. Regional Development Commissioner Cretu acknowledged that a great deal of effort had gone into the adoption process in the latter part of this week and she intends to maintain this pace at the start of next year so that each and every programme can be in place as soon as possible. All programmes have now been approved for France, Luxembourg, Ireland, Croatia, Slovenia, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Slovakia, Malta, Cyprus, Greece, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Denmark and Lithuania, and Germany and Poland have had most of their programmes adopted. (MD)