/ programmes, directives and other European decisions which have entered into force early this year

Brussels, 03/01/200 (Agence Europe) -Like every year numerous legislative texts or European programmes entered into force on 1 January. Among these the reduction of VAT for high-intensity manual services and the new directive on the commercialisation of wireless telecommunications equipment will be of particular importance to the European economy. Regularly renewable, or passing from trial phase into a definitive version, several community programmes are launched for four or five years; this is the case with the Socrates programme for education and with "Culture 2000", which will encompass the different programmes which existed until now in the fields of culture and artistic heritage. Numerous "technical" decisions in the agriculture-, environment-, transport-, and telecommunications sectors have got to be applied as of now. Some examples are the prohibition of leaded petrol (with certain derogations), the total liberalisation of voice telephony and the liberalisation of inland navigation. Below is an overview of those texts which entered into force on 1 January 2000.

Foreign affairs, trade, development:

Provisional implementation of the trade chapter of the Trade, Development and Cooperation Agreement between the European community and South Africa.

Liberalisation of imports of rum from ACP-countries.

End of EU/Japan arrangement by which the import of Japanese cars was limited in 5 Member States. The European car market is completely liberalised (See EUROPE of 30 December, p. 8).

Implementation of the pre-accession Structural Instrument ("Ispa") and of the special pre-accession instrument for rural development ("Sapard"), which is scheduled to last for 7 years.

Education, social affairs, culture:

Pursuit of the "Socrates" programme for educational matters, (which as of now includes the "Erasmus" programme for university exchange), with a budget of 1.85 billion euros for the seven year-period 2000-2006.

Pursuit of the "Leonardo da Vinci" programme for training of professionals (with a budget of 1.15 billion euros for the seven-year period 2000-2006).

Pursuit of the "Daphne" programme for combating sexual and other violence against children, adolescents and women (with a budget of 20 million euros for the four-year period 2000-2003).

Launch of the "Europass" programme of inter-community mobility for persons undergoing training in the various Member States (with a budget of 7.3 million euro for the five-year period 2000-2004).

Launch of the "Culture 2000" framework programme which replaces the Kaleidoscope programme (cultural and artistic activities), the Raphael programme (cultural heritage) and the Ariane programme (books), with a budget of 7.3 million euros for the five year-period 2000-2004.

Internal Market:

New directive on the reduction of VAT for high-intensity manual services. Launched on an experimental basis for a period of three years, the directive is implemented on a voluntary basis by 9 Member States. (see EUROPE of 23 December, p. 6).

Modification of rules governing the collection of statistics ("Intrastat"). These modifications simplify the data requested of companies for the compilation of information on the exchange of goods between the Member States.

Environment:

Prohibition of leaded petrol within the EU and setting of upper limits for certain pollutants such as sulphur. Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal and France (for their overseas territories) have obtained derogations from this directive (see EUROPE of 21 December, p. 10). These were adopted within the framework of the Auto-oil programme on the quality of petrol and diesel mixtures (98/70/EC).

Implementation of limits on emissions for large combustion plants which begin operating after 1 January 2000.

Implementation of financial regulation of the Life III programme, whose budget for the five-year period 2000-2004 is 613 million euros.

Implementation of common norms for the disposal of batteries and accumulators (modification of directive 98/101/EC).

Launch of community action programme for Civil Protection, with a budget of 7.5 million euros over five years from 2000-2004.

Putting into place of a new community framework for cooperation in combating the accidental pollution of the ocean for the period between 1 January 2000 and 31 December 2006, with a budget of 1 million euros per year.

Transport:

Liberalisation of the inland navigation which will allow liberty of chartering and price-setting for river navigation.

Obligation to register persons navigating on board passenger ships: the directive in force since January 1999 already makes it obligatory to register the names and ages of passengers for journeys longer than 20 nautical miles.

Telecom:

Entry into force of a new directive on the commercialisation of telecommunications equipment (with one derogation for France) and launch of new harmonised systems of granting operators' licences.

Complete liberalisation of voice telephony after the end of derogations for Portugal, Ireland and Luxembourg.

Fisheries and Agriculture:

Definite prohibition against the administration of bovine spongiform (BSE) to dairy cows.

New regime of structural aid in the fisheries sector.

Regional policy:

New guidelines for regional state aid that set the map of regions that may benefit from national and European aid without prejudice to European competition rules.