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Conferral of Management of the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA) Component I
31.10.2008, 21:11
On 28 October 2008 the European
Commission made the decision to confer management of IPA Component I to
the Croatian authorities. Croatia is the first country to have
received this conferral of management. The decision shows the
Commission's confidence in Croatia's ability to efficiently utilise
pre-accession funds and ensure sound financial management.
IPA is the pre-accession programme which the European Union makes available to the candidate and potential candidate countries during the financial framework 2007 - 2013. It replaces the former financial instruments (CARDS, Phare, ISPA and SAPARD) and unifies them under a single instrument.
IPA consists of five components:I Transition Assistance and Institution Building. It is the successor of the CARDS and Phare programmes and its aims at providing support to the Croatian institutions for legal and administrative reforms and fulfilment of criteria for membership;
II The purpose of Cross-border Co-operation is to intensify co-operation with the neighbouring countries and help address the problems specific to the border regions;
III Regional Development component consists of capital investments in the transport and environment protection infrastructure. It also contains the measures designed to stimulate economic activity in the less developed regions of Croatia.
IV The aim of the Human Resources Development component is to improve the human potential of Croatia through interventions in the areas of education and employment. It is a precursor of the European Social Fund.
V Rural Development component supports economic activity in the area of agriculture and food production, including development and upgrade of rural infrastructure.
IPA is designed to prepare the candidate countries for the kind of financial support which they can receive from the structural and agricultural instruments after accession. The kind of funding Croatia receives through IPA is similar to that received by the Member States under the Structural Instruments. In order to ensure the success of this process, the institutions, their staff, resources and working procedures were exposed to an accreditation process conducted by the European Commission audit services in May and June of this year which proved that Croatia is capable to carry out programming, tendering and implementation of IPA. In the procurement process, the strictest standards of impartiality and non-conflict of interest, confidentiality, equal treatment of bidders and transparency are to be applied. In order to ensure best value for public money and in order to minimise the level of errors, the EC Delegation in Zagreb will examine the tender procedures carried out by the Croatian authorities through a rule-based and detailed ex-ante control mechanism. Once the Croatian Implementing bodies have achieved the required quality standards in the handling of EU funds, the Commission will cease to exert its control function. This should be the case at the latest at the time of accession to the EU.
The decision made applies to the IPA Component I. Similar decisions for components II, III and IV are expected by the end of November. Due to the complexity of structures and procedures which need to be put in place the preparations for component V take more time and the decision on the conferral of management is expected in the first half of 2009.
Source: www.delhrv.ec.europa.eu