|
|
Commission Report (2002): Czech Republic
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 the Czech Republic a total of 61 twinning projects were funded by the
Community between 1998 and 2001. In total [x] projects are now running,
covering areas such as the legal business environment, pension reform, public
procurement, preparing for the CAP/EAGGF, integrated pollution prevention and
control (IPPC), corruption and economic crime, the Supreme Court, Supreme
Audit Office, the Central State Administration, preparations for the
Structural Funds, and financial control.
2002 also saw the start of ``Twinning light'' projects in the
areas of combat of organised crime, environmental indicators and IPPC.
© European Commission
|
|
