The Official Journal of the European Union has published on the 30 th august 2008 the opinion of the European Economic and Social Committee on the Proposal for a decision of the European Parliament and of the Council amending four multi-annual programmes in the culture framework.

The proposal is part of a series of four proposals aimed at making the rules more flexible on the allocation of grants involving small sums, which are set down in the following four multi-annual programmes for the 2007-2013 period:

• Youth in action.
• Culture.
• Europe for citizens.
• Lifelong learning action plan.

The Commission noted that when the four programmes were being negotiated, the legislator intended only to submit i) decisions on the allocation of grants involving substantial sums (more than EUR 1,000,000 for projects and multi-lateral networks) and ii) politically sensitive decisions (on cooperation and political innovation) to the comitology procedure (management procedure with a qualified majority vote). Ad hoc arrangements has been done up to know to avoid the comitology procedure, but in order to operate faster it is needed to update the Decision by:

• Doing away with the obligation to submit decisions on the allocation of grants involving small sums to the consultation procedure.
• Permitting the Commission to adopt decisions on grant allocation without the assistance of a Committee.

This changes will help to function more smoothly.

The opinions published on the Official Journal are:

• Opinion of the European Economic and Social Committee on the Proposal for a decision of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Decision no 1720/2006/EC establishing an Action programme in the field of lifelong learning COM(2008) 61 final — 2008/0025 (COD)
• Opinion of the European Economic and Social Committee on the Proposal for a decision of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Decision No 1719/2006/EC establishing the Youth in Action programme for the period 2007 to 2013 COM(2008) 56 final — 2008/0023 (COD)
• Opinion of the European Economic and Social Committee on the Proposal for a decision of the European Parliament and of the Council on the European Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion (2010) COM(2007) 797 final — 2007/0278 (COD)