Legal provisions of COM(1995)486-2 - Adoption of a multiannual programme to promote the linguistic diversity of the EC in the information society - Main contents
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| dossier | COM(1995)486-2 - Adoption of a multiannual programme to promote the linguistic diversity of the EC in the information society. |
|---|---|
| document | COM(1995)486  |
| date | November 21, 1996 |
Article 1
- to raise awareness of and stimulate provision of multilingual services in the Community, which make use of language technologies, resources and standards,
- to create favourable conditions for the development of the language industries,
- to reduce the cost of information transfer among languages, in particular for the sake of SMEs,
- to contribute to the promotion of the linguistic diversity of the Community.
For the purposes of this Decision:
(a) multilingual services are defined as services allowing communication between users of different languages of the Community;
(b) language industries are defined as companies, institutions and professionals that provide, or enable the provision of, monolingual or multilingual services, in fields such as information retrieval, translation, language engineering and electronic dictionaries.
Article 2
- support for the creation of a framework of services for language resources and encouragement for the associations involved in such a construction,
- encouragement for the use of language technologies, resources and standards and their incorporation into computer applications,
- promotion of the use of advanced language tools in the Community and Member States public sector,
- accompanying measures.
None of these actions should duplicate the work being carried out in these fields under Community or national programmes.
In all schemes planned, existing national, Community and international resource-pooling cooperation arrangements in the field of translation, terminology, lexica and corpora shall be taken into account in the Community's measures, so as to make use of available facilities and avoid duplication of work.
Article 3
The financial reference amount for the implementation of this programme for the abovementioned period shall be ECU 15 million.
The annual appropriations shall be authorized by the budgetary authority within the limits of the financial perspective.
An indicative breakdown of expenditure is given in Annex II.
Article 4
The Commission shall be assisted by a committee composed of the representatives of the Member States and chaired by the representative of the Commission.
2. The representative of the Commission shall submit to the Committee a draft of the measures to be taken. The Committee shall deliver its opinion on the draft within a time limit which the chairman may lay down according to the urgency of the matter. The opinion shall be delivered by the majority laid down in Article 148 (2) of the Treaty in the case of decisions which the Council is required to adopt on a proposal from the Commission. The votes of the representatives of the Member States within the Committee shall be weighted in the manner set out in that Article. The chairman shall not vote.
3. (a) The Commission shall adopt the measures envisaged if they are in accordance with the opinion of the Committee.
(b) If the measures envisaged are not in accordance with the opinion of the Committee, or if no opinion is delivered, the Commission shall without delay submit to the Council a proposal relating to the measures to be taken. The Council shall act by a qualified majority.
If, on the expiry of a period of three months from the date of referral to the Council, the Council has not acted, the proposed measures shall be adopted by the Commission.
Article 5
- the adoption of the work programme,
- the breakdown of the budgetary expenditure,
- the criteria and content of calls for proposals,
- the assessment of the projects proposed under calls for proposals for Community funding and the estimated amount of the Community contribution for each project where this is equal to, or more than, ECU 100 000; where, however, the amount is less than ECU 100 000, the Commission shall merely inform the Committee of the projects and of the outcome of their assessment,
- the measures for programme evaluation,
- any departure from the rules normally applied as set out in Annex III,
- participation in any project by legal entities from third countries and international organizations.
2. The Commission shall regularly inform the Committee of progress with the implementation of the programme as a whole.
Article 6
2. During implementation of projects and after their completion, the Commission shall evaluate the manner in which they have been carried out and the impact of their implementation in order to assess whether the original objectives have been achieved.
In so doing, the Commission shall in particular investigate the extent to which the SMEs target group has benefited from the projects implemented.
3. The selected beneficiaries shall submit an annual report to the Commission.
4. The Commission shall submit to the European Parliament, the Council, the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions, once the Committee referred to in Article 4 has examined them, an intermediate and a final evaluation report drawn up on the basis of an analysis made by independent experts, of the results obtained in implementing the actions referred to in Article 2. The Commission may present, on the basis of those results, proposals for adjusting the orientation of the programme.
This analysis shall be submitted before any follow-up programme is approved.