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8.2.2 EU Transport Sector Grants Pre-ISPA: Phare and LISF (1990-1999)
As noted above, ISPA was only instituted in 1999. The European Union's
comprehensive proposal for coherent accession assistance to CEE was first set out in
Agenda 2000 (Commission of the European Communities 1997d; Commission of the
European Communities 1997e), which specifically mentions the creation of the new
ISPA instrument. ISPA was designed to complement and in part supersede the EU’s
older Phare grant program and the LSIF. 10
In order to also better contextualize the ISPA
program within the longer post-transition history of EU grant assistance, the following
section presents a short review of EU transport infrastructure grants to CEECs from the
early 1990s.
The EU’s first grant assistance instrument, the so-called Phare program was
originally instituted in 1989 to coordinate EC assistance toward Poland and Hungary. 11
After the 1994 European Council meeting in Essen, Phare became the EU’s main
program for grant assistance for the CEE candidate countries. From 1990 to 1994, the
program allocated 4.2 billion ECU, a sum that was increased to 6.7 billion in the
following programming period from 1995 to 1999. However, it was only after the
Luxembourg European Council in 1997 officially launched the present enlargement
process that Phare became a true “pre-accession” instrument. This also meant that Phare
became a less demand-driven instrument, since the EU began setting out its own list of
10 LISF (Large-Scale Infrastructure Facility) was a short-lived, Phare-funded pre-cursor to ISPA. From
1998-99, the LISF was intended to cover the transition from Phare to ISPA by funding select large-scale
infrastructure projects in the candidate states, with an emphasis on co-financing with the IFIs. It was
primarily for this purpose that the EC, the EBRD and the World Bank signed a Memorandum of
Understanding in March 1998 setting out the means and method of their enhanced cooperation. Also see
Commission of the European Communities (1999d:5).
11
The (francophone) acronym PHARE meant “Poland and Hungary - Assistance for Economic
Reconstruction.” The acronym became common usage so it was kept even after the program was extended
to include other countries. Detailed information about the Phare program can be found under
http://europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/pas/phare/index.htm, last accessed on 6-21-2002.