Strasbourg, 08/09/2000 (Agence Europe) - On a proposal from Jean-Louis Bourlanges (EPP, France), the Budgets Committee of the European Parliament unanimously approved the freeing of EUR 12.5 million aimed at the Commission delegations in third countries, credits that it had put away while awaiting progress in the reform of the work by the delegations in the direction of decentralisation. On 18 July, the European Commission had adopted a Communication on the development of the external services. Mr Bourlanges underlined that the credits in question could be freed on condition that the four criteria are respected: - reinforcing of regionalisation; - strengthening of effort for redeployment of personnel; - introduction of a form of harmonisation of the ratio between local agents/European civil servant in the delegations; - accentuating the centralisation (so that certain decision may be taken on the field and thus reducing backlogs in the payments).