I External aid

ANNUAL REPORT ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION’S EXTERNAL ASSISTANCE
ASSISTANCE TO CANDIDATE COUNTRIES:
A SEPARATE ISSUE
“The European Community also provided over €3 billion of
assistance in 2000 to third countries who are candidates to
the European Union. Assistance is allocated to priority areas
indicated by the Commission in an "Accession Partnership"
for each country, which is based on the weaknesses identified
in the Commission's annual Regular Report on the preparations
of the candidate country for accession.
Nearly 95% of the assistance was directed to the ten candidate
countries of Eastern and Central Europe through three
pre-accession assistance programmes. Half of this amount
is accounted for by Phare, which is managed by DG Enlargement,
and is focused on helping the countries prepare to
implement the acquis communautaire upon accession. One
third is for Ispa, which is managed by DG Regional Policy,
and is focused on major investments in the environment and
transport sectors. One sixth is for Sapard, which is managed
by DG Agriculture, and is focused on rural development and
agriculture.
About 5% of the assistance is allocated to Turkey and is currently
implemented using the Meda Regulation. A new financial
regulation for Turkey has been proposed by the Commission
with a view to replacing financing from the three
existing sources in 2002. Finally rather less than 1% of the
total is allocated to Cyprus and Malta on the basis of a specific
regulation. The assistance to Turkey, Cyprus and Malta
is managed by DG Enlargement. It should be noted that these
countries remain eligible for support from Meda horizontal
projects in the context of the Barcelona process.
For each pre-accession financial instrument the managing
DG is responsible within the Commission for the whole project
cycle from programming through implementation to evaluation.
However it should be noted that these programmes
are carried out on a highly decentralised basis with the candidate
country itself directly responsible for managing project
implementation (subject to some checking of tendering
and contracting by Commission Delegations on-the-spot).
2. Improving external
aid management
At the same time as defining new directions for the Community’s
development policy, an ambitious reform of the way
external aid is managed has been launched, aimed at improving
project quality and cutting the time taken to implement
them.
A first step towards unification of the services tasked with executing
the third country aid programmes, and towards improving
management was the setting up, in 1998, of the Common
Service for External Relations (SCR). The SCR set to work to eli-
© Santiago Herrero Villa
Water is a common treasure that all use with parsimony.
minate payment delays, reduce commitment backlogs, harmonise
and simplify contracting and subsidy-granting procedures,
and rationalise information systems (see details in the Annex).
On 16 May 2000, the Commission decided to go a step further
and set in motion a major reform programme. The concern was,
in particular, to:
◗ considerably improve the quality and adaptability of project
management;
◗ significantly reduce the time taken to implement projects;
◗ provide harmonised financial, technical and contract management
procedures to meet the best international standards
of ethics and responsibility;
◗ strengthen the impact and visibility of the European Union’s
co-operation and development aid.
This reform programme has four main thrusts:
◗ a total revision and unification of external aid programming,
in line with the objectives and priorities of European Union
policies;
◗ integrated management of the entire operations cycle;
◗ setting up a single department (EuropeAid Co-operation
Office) tasked with the project cycle from identification to
evaluation;
◗ large-scale devolution of project management towards the
Commission Delegations.
A New Policy
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