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Issues for Country Evaluation: The Case of the EU Country Programme in Russia
A desire to promote integration between Russia and Europe has been made
explicitly by Moscow: “I believe a decisive step has been made towards renewing
the unity of our continent. This Agreement is a document setting out precisely and
clearly the conditions and stages of Russia’s return to economic Europe, as an equal
partner”, President Eltsin said at the signature of the PCA.
Along with the consolidation of the PCA, which has become a key reference for
the Tacis country programme, a number of other factors should be considered in
order to have complete understanding of the political framework, which characterises
the very singular EU-Russia relationship:
– EU already has a long border in common with north-western Russia.
– This common border will increase with the entry of the Baltic countries in the EU.
– With the extension of the EU to include these countries, trade flows and transfrontier
relationships between Russia and EU will be greatly strengthened.
Such relationships are going to become vital not only for trade and exchange
rates, but also in relation to certain key stability and security factors, including environment
risk, peace and nuclear safety, migration control, and crime and delinquency
repression.
A number of initiatives have already been launched to cope with these new
perspectives, such as:
– The EU Northern Dimension, in which environment, infrastructure and other
issues specific to the northern sub-region of EU and its neighbouring countries
are dealt with.
– The Trans-European Network (TEN), or transport corridors.
In this context, Tacis should become a key element of the global partnership
and long-term integration process between EU and Russia. From now on, its work
should increasingly focus on the establishment of inter-institutional networks
between the two partners, as well as between private enterprises, central and local
government bodies, scientific and training institutions, civil society groups and
NGOs. Special attention should be given to joint projects, especially in the domain
of transport infrastructure, customs, trade standards, and financial regulations. This
new emphasis should reduce the traditional technical assistance (TA) component
of Tacis, since the transfer of know-how should occur at horizontal level in an
attempt to solve common problems.
A CP evaluation should highlight the coherence between development cooperation
and global partnership so that all of the goals and the results of a CP can
be globally understood and judged in both donor and recipient countries.
OECD 1999
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