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Commission Report 2002 (Hungary)
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 the 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 Hungary, 23 twinning projects were financed under the 1997, 1998 and
1999 Phare programmes; 22 of them have been completed. Eight additional
projects, financed under Phare 2000, are currently being implemented. They
provide assistance in the areas of agriculture, the environment, regional
development, social policy, customs and the fight against drugs. 17 twinning
projects financed under Phare 2001 have already started. They cover areas
such as energy, market surveillance, agriculture, the social dialogue, the
environment, justice and home affairs, traffic control, regional policy and
the future management of the Structural Funds. Five ``Twinning
light'' projects, also financed under Phare 2001, have been launched.
Concerning the 2002 Phare programme, eight out of 12 twinning projects have
already been approved by the Commission. Under the same programme, three
``Twinning light'' projects have already been identified, two of
which have already been launched.
© European Commission; last modified 2003-05-21
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