Improving cooperation between countries

On 27^th September, the annual meeting of the national contact points of the 28 European Union Member States for the Twinning programme was held at the Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs in Vienna (Austria).

The European Commission has various funding instruments, one of which is the Twinning programme. This is a cooperation mechanism created in 1998 by the European Commission to aid the accession to the European Union of potential candidates in Central and Eastern Europe by supporting their administrations in adopting the EU acquis  (the body of community regulations and procedures) and in the consequential reform of their institutions. The success of the programme has led to the European Commission extending said programme to countries from the European Neighbourhood Policy (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia in the South; and Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine in the East).

Work is being done on measures such as port legislation in Azerbaijan, road safety in Algeria, customs management in Turkey and tax declarations in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

Spanish public administrations are participating especially actively in this programme. For its part, the specialised Spanish institution places a long-term expert in its sister institution in the beneficiary country. Short-term experts are also mobilised in the organisation of seminars, study visits and other activities to accompany the institution in the institutional, regulatory or political reform identified previously.

Each European Union Member Country has a person (national contact point) in charge of centralising the Twinning projects that are presented for implementation by the European Commission. They meet annually to share improvements in the management of this type of project.

At this year´s meeting, the updating of the Twinning Manual was encouraged with the aim of simplifying management of the programme and improving its efficiency.

FIIAPP is the only Spanish institution chosen to manage Twinning projects. Having managed more than 300 Twinning projects, FIIAPP is the leading European operator of this programme, and it manages the participation of the Spanish administrations.

More information on the Twinning Programme here