The Absorption Capacity of Turkey for Its Use of the European Union Pre-Accession Assistance

Abstract

The European Union’s (EU) financial assistance is an important instrument to use in preparing Candidate Countries (CCs) for membership. The EU’s financial assistance programs are implemented under the Decentralized Implementation System (DIS) in CCs. Building up an adequate institutional capacity during the accession period is of high importance for the effective use of the available resources and also for preparing the countries for their full absorption capacity of the EU’s Structural and Cohesion Funds. The experiences and best practices obtained during the implementation of previous accession programs provide valuable lessons for the CCs. Experience shows that the financial allocations may not be used fully by the beneficiary countries because of many different reasons such as a complex implementation system, excessive controls, too much eligibility criteria and inadequate administrative capacity. Considerable attention is therefore devoted to analyzing and improving the performance of the financial assistance programs. Tackling the low absorption problem encountered in the Member States (MSs) and CCs is becoming one of the central issues discussed at the EU and the national levels. Turkey is benefiting from the EU’s Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA). In this study, Turkey’s performance in the use of the IPA funds and the elements affecting the absorption capacity are assessed based on the experiences obtained both during the setting up of the DIS structure and in the outcomes of the implementation so far.