Regional Project News

The European Commission’s institutional building tools, Twinning, TAIEX and SIGMA, are “a powerful instrument to support our Partners’ efforts to approximate the EU legislation and modernise their administrations”, European Commissioner for Enlargement and Neighbourhood Policy Štefan Füle in the 2009 Activity Report for the three instruments within the ENPI.

 

Institutional Twinning, TAIEX (Technical Assistance and Information Exchanges) and SIGMA (Support for Improvement in Governance and Management) were created in the framework of acceding countries and were successfully adapted to the Neighbourhood region in 2004, 2006 and 2008 respectively.

 

“Ensuring the transfer of European know-how in a practical, hands-on, and peer-to-peer manner, these instruments are proving to be powerful tools for the reform and modernisation processes that our neighbours pursue and which the EU intends to support with even greater vigour in the years to come,” the Commissioner said in his forward to the Activity Report, a six-page leaflet published by EuropeAid.

 

Twinning projects at the beginning of 2010 passed the 100 mark, in the context of an overall pipeline of more than 230 Twinning projects. This pipeline covers a wide range of areas such as finance and internal market, environment, justice and home affairs, energy, transport, trade and industry, agriculture, employment, social affairs, health & consumer protection, etc.

 

The TAIEX instrument has been equally successful, reaching more than 1,000 requests for assistance since it started, from the Neighbourhood countries and Russia, and this at an average rate of more than one per day. More than 5000 participants from the region participated in TAIEX events in 2009.

 

In 2009, the launching of SIGMA activities in the ENPI countries attracted interest in key reform areas such as: Legal Framework, Civil Service and Justice, Financial Control and External Audit, Public Procurement and Policy making. About 30 country-specific operational projects have already been undertaken in each of the ENP sub-regions (East and South) and eight additional operational projects, mainly focused on Programme Management and Policy Making, reassembled all countries in the region.

 

The leaflet contains facts and figures about all three instruments, as well as four Twinning success stories, from Ukraine, Egypt, Morocco and Azerbaijan. (ENPI Info Centre)

 

 

 

 

 

ENPI Info Centre publication – Multi-country cooperation instruments and thematic tools