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EU-Report Accession Bulgaria
One
of the main challenges still facing the candidate countries is the need to strengthen their
administrative and judicial capacity to implement and enforce the acquis. As of 1998, the
European Commission began to mobilise significant human and financial resources to help them with
this process, using the mechanism of twinning administrations and agencies. In 2001, the
Commission strengthened this emphasis on institution building further, through the launch of the
Action Plans for strengthening administrative and judicial capacity.
The twinning process makes the vast body of Member States' expertise available to the
candidate countries through the long-term secondment of civil servants and accompanying
short-term expert missions and training.
A total of 503 twinning projects were funded by the Community between 1998 and 2001. Between
1998 and 2000, these projects primarily targeted the main priority sectors identified in the
Accession Partnerships: agriculture, the environment, public finance, justice and home affairs
and preparation for the management of Structural Funds. Since 2000, other important sectors of
the acquis have also been addressed through twinning, such as social policy, the fight against
drugs, transport, and telecommunications regulation. Twinning now covers all sectors pursuant to
the acquis.
Thanks to the strong support of the EU Member States, 103 twinning partnerships were funded by
Phare 1998 involving all the candidate countries and almost all the Member States. These
first-generation projects have already come to an end. Under Phare 1999, a further 123 projects
are currently being implemented and the programming exercise for Phare 2000 included a further
146 twinning projects. The 2001 programming exercise includes 131 twinning projects embracing all
the Phare beneficiary countries, as well as Cyprus and Malta. Under the 2002 programming
exercise, 119 twinning projects have already been planned and approved for implementation. A
substantial number of additional twinning projects are planned, and these should be approved and
implementation launched before the end of 2002. They include twinning projects identified in the
Action Plans for strengthening administrative and judicial capacity in the negotiating countries.
It is estimated that around 300 twinning projects are operational throughout the candidate
countries at any one time. Furthermore, the candidate countries are being offered a further way
of drawing on Member States' expertise through ``Twinning light'', a mechanism to
address carefully-circumscribed projects of limited scope which emerge during the negotiation
process as requiring adaptation.
For Bulgaria, eleven projects are being delivered under the 1998 Phare programme, fifteen
under the 1999 programme, fourteen under the 2000 programme and twelve under the 2001 programme
wholly or partly using twinning. Twinning will again be an important element under the 2002
programme, contributing to the results of around fifteen projects. These span a broad range of
sectors including improving the business environment, agriculture, rural development, veterinary
control, company law, competition policy, consumer health, eco-tourism, judicial and
administrative strengthening, combating corruption and border control.
© EU Commission -- 2003-03-30
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