- sector guidelines not elaborated and establishment of systems of good practices in all individual elements of food chain (good agricultural practice, good manufacturing practice, good hygiene practice), and upgrading the internal control systems according to principles of the HACCP system;

The Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to this Protocol shall, at its first session or as soon as practicable thereafter, decide upon modalities, rules and guidelines as to how, and which, additional human-induced activities related to changes in greenhouse gas emissions by sources and removals by sinks in the agricultural soils and the land-use change and forestry categories shall be added to, or subtracted from, the assigned amounts for Parties included in Annex I, taking into account uncertainties, transparency in reporting, verifiability, the methodological work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the advice provided by the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice in accordance with Article 5 and the decisions of the Conference of the Parties.

The Commission has applied Articles 87 and 88 of the Treaty to small and medium-sized enterprises active in the production, processing and marketing of agricultural products in numerous decisions and has also stated its policy, most recently in the Community guidelines for State aid in the agriculture sector(4) (hereafter referred to as the "agriculture guidelines").

When laying down the guidelines referred to in paragraph 1, the Commission may consult the Standing Group on Promotion of Agricultural Products of the Advisory Committee on Agricultural Product Health and Safety.

- step up the exchange of information on their agricultural policy guidelines, including short- and medium-term production, consumption and trade forecasts,

Whereas the selection criteria laid down by the Commission pursuant to Article 8 of Council Regulation (EC) No 951/97 of 20 May 1997 on improving the processing and marketing conditions for agricultural products (7) should be applied to investments eligible under this Regulation in order to ensure consistency between the various measures financed by the Community, until such time as the new agricultural policy guidelines for fruit and vegetables introduced by Regulation (EC) No 2200/96 are implemented;

Whereas the rules on the depreciation of products in storage, referred to in Articles 7 and 8 of that Regulation, must be adapted to the new guidelines as regards the financing of agricultural expenditure set out in the Conclusions of the European Council of 11 and 12 February 1988, according to which the storage situation must be brought back to normal by 1992;

The agricultural guideline remains unchanged.

The agricultural guideline shall cover the sum of:

The institutions agreed that calculation of the agricultural guideline would remain unchanged.

The agricultural guideline for a given year shall be equal to the reference base laid down in paragraph 1 plus:

The agricultural guideline, which constitutes for each budget year the ceiling on agricultural expenditure defined in Article 4(1), must be respected each year.

For each budget year, the Commission shall submit the agricultural guideline at the same time as the preliminary draft budget.

The Participants undertook to start negotiations in 1994 on complementary guidelines on Export Credits on agricultural products.

These appropriations shall not be covered by the agricultural guideline and shall not come under subheading 1a of the financial perspective.

The European Council concluded that the agricultural guideline would from now on cover expenditure under the reformed common agricultural policy, the new rural development measures, veterinary and plant-health measures, expenditure in connection with the agricultural pre-accession instrument and the amounts available for accession.

The reference base from which the agricultural guideline is to be calculated shall be equal to EUR 36394 million for 1995, that is to say the total corresponding to the calculation made on the previous base for 1988.

Whereas the divisions of the data network must, as far as possible, be identical with those used for the presentation of other regional data that are essential in order to provide guidelines for the common agricultural policy;

The Commission has applied Articles 87 and 88 of the Treaty to small and medium-sized enterprises active in the production, processing and marketing of agricultural products in numerous decisions and has also stated its policy, most recently in the Community guidelines for State aid in the agriculture sector(4) (hereafter referred to as the "agriculture guidelines").

The object of the Codex Alimentarius Commission is, inter alia, to develop and harmonise world-wide health standards and to issue guidelines and recommendations on agricultural and fishery products, foodstuffs, food additives and contaminants, feedstuffs, veterinary drugs, pesticides, including labelling, methods of analysis and sampling, codes of ethics and good agricultural practice and guidelines of hygiene practice, in view of protecting consumers' health and ensuring fair practices in international trade.

Each year the Commission, acting ahead of the budgetary procedure for year n + 1, will determine the agricultural guideline and make the following technical adjustments to the financial perspective in line with movements in gross national product (GNP) and prices:

Whereas all the returning holdings surveyed in the Member States for the purposes of recording farm incomes in order to provide guidelines for agricultural policies should belong to the Community data network and the number of returning holdings must be increased accordingly;

To determine the appropriate density of livestock referred to above, the livestock units equivalent to 170 kg of Nitrogen per year/hectare of agricultural area used for the various categories of animals shall be set out by the competent authorities of the Member States, taking, as a guideline, the figures laid down in Annex VII.

Whereas, in the agricultural sector, the Community support will be implemented in the form of multiannual programmes established in accordance with the guidelines and the principles of the operational programmes applied in the framework of structural policy in order to facilitate in the applicant countries the implementation of the principles and procedures in force;

to adopt guidelines to ensure that an increasing proportion of basic foodstuffs is provided to least-developed and net food-importing developing countries in fully grant form and/or on appropriate concessional terms in line with Article IV of the Food Aid Convention 1986; (iii) to give full consideration in the context of their aid programmes to requests for the provision of technical and financial assistance to least-developed and net food-importing developing countries to improve their agricultural productivity and infrastructure.

As a general rule, the European Community has exclusive competence for agenda items dealing with harmonisation of standards on certain agricultural products, foodstuffs, food additives, contaminants, veterinary drug, pesticides, fish and fishery products, including labelling, methods of analysis and sampling, as well as codes and guidelines of hygiene practice, insofar as the Community legislation has harmonised either completely or to a large extent the relevant fields in these areas, as well as issues of international trade to the extent that they are related to the objectives of the Codex Alimentarius Commission, notably to protecting the health of the consumers and ensuring fair practices in the food trade.

step up the exchange of information on their agricultural policy guidelines, including short-and medium-term production, consumption and trade forecasts,