Instrument For Pre-Accession Assistance Research Articles

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

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.

Designing external healthcare assessment and improvement systems in Serbia

AbstractThis paper is a summary of a current European Union (EU)-funded project (1.5 M EUR, June 2009–April 2011) from the IPA (Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance) 2007 programme, as part of the EU's assistance to healthcare in Serbia. The project's main objective is to improve the health-care system in the Republic of Serbia so as to create a safe, equitable, viable, and high-performance-oriented healthcare system where providers of care are stimulated to achieve continuously increasing standards of efficiency, effectiveness, and quality. Supporting the development of the Serbian Accreditation Agency for Healthcare Institutions and the challenges in assisting the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Serbia with continuous quality improvement at system level will be described, including the project achievements to date and analysis of results.

Serbia and European integration: Long process of stabilization and adaptation

The article describes and analyzes the European integration of Serbia in the last ten years. The author first presents the very framework and phase of the Stabilization and Association Process (SAP), which is precondition for all the other candidates for EU accession. Then, the author analyze the achievements of the Serbian SAP through its most important instruments, such as the Stabilization and Association Agreement, preaccession financial funds (like Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance), the European partnership and regional cooperation. Particular emphasis is placed on analysis of specific obstacles to Serbia towards European integration. These three problems are: the Serbian-Montenegrin relations within the joint federal / state union, (non)cooperation with the Hague tribunal and the problems of Serbia with the Kosovo status issue.

Territorial Cooperation and Regional Economic Development: A Case Study

Cooperation may be defined as the collaboration between two or more parties which fuels initiatives that have shared, or converging interests and objectives. In the European Union territorial cohesion has recently been included in the draft of the European Constitution and is complementary to the EU drive towards economic and social cohesion. This adds a new dimension to European integration which clearly recognises that considering things from a territorial dimension is a tool for reducing the territorial disparity currently present in the EU. In fact, well before its enlargement, significant disparities in prosperity levels existed both between and within member states: prosperity levels in the ten most dynamic regions of the EU, based on GDP per capita, were nearly three times higher than that of the ten least developed regions and regional differences have widened with enlargement. In this context, the territorial cooperation objective aims to: improve cross-border cooperation through joint, local and regional initiatives; strengthen trans-national cooperation by means of actions conducive to integrated territorial development linked to Community priorities as well as to strengthen interregional cooperation and the exchange of experience at the appropriate territorial level. Three different typologies of territorial cooperation have been identified with the European territory: cross-border cooperation, trans-national cooperation and Interregional cooperation. The paper focuses on the territorial cooperation objective and presents a case study with large and strong economic, social and environmental disparities. It includes EU members and non EU members. More specifically, the IPA (Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance) Adriatic Cross Border Cooperation (CBC) Program, which includes three EU Member States, one Candidate Country, and three Potential Candidates Countries.