EUROPEAN COMMISSION.

Main events in the week starting April 28:

* Weekly meeting on April 30 in Brussels. Items scheduled to appear on the agenda:

- Preparation of the EU Preliminary Draft Budget for 2004;

- Recommendation on Austria's updated Stability Programme;

- Decisions about merger operations (Siemens/Draegerwerk and Daimler/Chrysler/Deutsche Telekom);

- Communication "Investing in research: an action plan for Europe";

- Communication on phasing out the preferential system for sugar imported from Serbia and Montenegro.

* Travel and visits:

- April 28: Commission President Romano Prodi and Margot Wallstrom meet the Prime Minister of Hessen Roland Koch; Mr Prodi meets Pat Cox, European Parliament President; Pascal Lamy meets the Minister and Secretary-General of the Presidency of Chile, Heraldo Munoz; Erkki Liikanen meets the Finnish Ministers for Transport, Leena Luhtanen, and Trade and Industry, Mauri Pekkarinen (Helsinki); Viviane Reding meets members of the UK Film Council Board; Participation by Commissioners Prodi, Busquin and Lamy in the conference on access to medicines (Brussels, Charlemagne); Participation by Loyola de Palacio in the Ministerial meeting of the International Energy Agency (April 28-29, Paris); Commissioner Fischler at the Ministerial conference on forestry protection in Europe (Vienna); Participation by Pascal Lamy in the Transatlantic Consumers Dialogue (Borschette); Poul Nielson in New York (April 28-29) the EU/UN Framework Agreement and talks;

- 29 April: Mr Prodi meets the French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin; Commissioners Reding and Diamantopoulou meet the State Secretary with the Germany Federal Ministry of the Family, the Elderly, Women and Youth, Peter Ruhenstroh-Bauer; Commissioners Patten and Liikanen meet the Egyptian Foreign Minister Fayza Aboulnaga; Mr Liikanen meets the Egyptian Industry and Technology Development Minister Ali El-Saeidy; Commissioners de Palacio, Bolkestein, Solbes and Patten meet Angela Merkel...