6 SUPPORTING INSTITUTION-BUILDING IN
THE CANDIDATE COUNTRIES THROUGH TWINNING
(24660)
Special Report No. 6/2003
| European Court of Auditors' Special Report No. 6/2003 (pursuant to Article
248(4), second subparagraph, EC) concerning Twinning as the main
instrument to support institution-building in Candidate Countries together with
the Commission's replies.
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| Legal base | —
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| Deposited in Parliament |
26 June 2003 |
| Department | International Development
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| Basis of consideration |
EM of 26 June 2003 |
| Previous Committee Report |
None |
| To be discussed in Council
| No date set |
| Committee's assessment | Politically important.
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| Committee's decision | Not cleared; further information requested
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Background
6.1 In November 1999, the Commission adopted new guidelines
for implementing PHARE, the main programme to assist the candidate
countries of Central and Eastern Europe to incorporate the acquis
communautaire and prepare for Structural Funds. Under these
guidelines, approximately 30% of resources are targeted on institution-building.
This is the process of helping the candidates to develop the
structures, strategies, human resources and management skills
needed to strengthen their economic, social, regulatory and administrative
capacities.
6.2 The main instrument used is twinning.
The public administrations of Member States provide experts on
a full-time and long-term basis to assist the candidate countries
to incorporate the acquis, through a transfer of knowledge
and experience from Member State administrations and public institutions.
The Commission has a rule that these should be civil servants
or acting civil servants. They are known as PAAs — Pre-Accession
Advisers. Between 1998 and February 2002, 503 twinning projects
were approved, with an overall budget of €471 million.
The European Court of Auditors' report
6.3 The objective of the audit on which
the European Court of Auditors (ECA) has issued this Special Report
was to assess the effectiveness of twinning as the main instrument
used to assist candidate countries to strengthen their administrative
capacity.
6.4 The audit found that the twinning projects
acted as a catalyst in prompting the candidate countries to set
in motion their reforms to adopt the acquis, but that progress
was rather slower in implementing and enforcing it. The report
describes twinning as a complex activity and puts the limited
results down to a combination of factors, which included:
- Unrealistic objectives.
To be eligible for
funding, twinning covenants have to be signed by the candidate
countries and the Member States and endorsed by the Commission.
The audit found that the objectives set in these were often unrealistic.
The Commission had sought to emphasise the need for practical
outcomes by including in these the term "guaranteed"
results. Failure or only partial success in producing these did
not, however, carry any financial penalties. The report says
that:
"In practice, it proved overly optimistic
to expect that a fully functioning, efficient and sustainable
Candidate Country organisation would exist in a given field after
one Twinning project, the average duration of which is 18 months".
- Poor commitment and ownership
by the candidate countries. Initially,
some candidate countries showed little commitment and did not
provide sufficient support. Pre-accession advisers were not always
given adequate office facilities, there were delays in recruiting
assistants for them, such as interpreters, and high-level officials
were unable to devote enough time to projects because of their
regular work. Also, throughout the period, there was very little
ownership of the process on the part of the candidate countries.
The Member States also under-estimated the level and amount of
their resources that would be required. Some pre-accession advisers
were not of high enough calibre.
- An increase in complexity and delays arising
from changes. Twinning is a relatively
new approach in the context audited and the ECA comments that
a positive feature is that the Commission assumed responsibility
for organising a learning process and, as a result, introducing
improvements. However, a negative effect was that different sets
of rules from those applying to older projects had to be applied
to new projects. Also, the interaction of numerous public administrations
diminished efficiency and effectiveness and too much time was
spent on administrative issues, to the detriment of the main task
of advising.
- The Commission's over-emphasis on twinning
often led to it being used in inappropriate circumstances, where
it made little impact.
6.5 The
ECA's main recommendations are that:
- There should be a results-oriented
approach, with clear and realistic objectives set for individual
projects.
- The process should be made less bureaucratic
to enable each stage of the project to be completed more quickly.
- The Commission should speed up its own internal
consultation procedures between Headquarters, Delegations and
line DGs, by respecting pre-set deadlines.
- The Commission should simplify and accelerate
the payment procedures and should, in general, consider the use
of fixed-price or lump-sum contracts.
- Twinning should be used as one component of an
institution-building strategy, focusing on those areas where it
could have the greatest impact, rather than as the Commission's
sole institution-building instrument.
- Lastly, the Commission should create a network
of pre-accession advisers to ensure that the specific knowledge
they have acquired is not lost, to spread good practice and to
reduce the risk of errors recurring. The report foresees twinning
continuing for a considerable time, both under PHARE, for those
candidate countries which will not be acceding next year, and
under a transition facility for new Member States.
The Government's view
6.6 The Secretary of State for International
Development (Baroness Amos) says:
"The UK contributes approximately 19% of
the budget of these programmes. This money is attributed to DFID.
Monitoring the impact and effectiveness of this spending is therefore
important. DFID agrees with the recommendations of the report,
which are in line with current UK policy on Twinning. There has
been an over-reliance on Twinning in the PHARE programme, and
a need for institution-building remains. Twinning is one of a
number of instruments which can be used to support institution-building,
as part of an overall strategy. However, it is not always appropriate,
and cannot alone address underlying structural problems within
administrations. It is important that the Commission takes account
of this report, and other evaluations of the PHARE programme (including
the findings of the Commission's own evaluation of PHARE), when
making decisions about the expansion of Twinning in CARDS, TACIS
and MEDA countries.
"The Commission has in the past evaluated and
improved upon the Twinning instrument and we would hope that they
would continue to do so. We would especially support the report's
recommendation that a network of pre-accession advisers be set
up to provide lesson-learning and to contribute to the process
of improving Twinning and ensure that it is used in an appropriate
fashion. We also support any move towards making the Commission's
institution-building strategy more results-oriented".
Conclusion
6.7 As in the case of the European Court
of Auditors (ECA) Special Report on funding environmental projects
in the candidate countries, on which we are also reporting,[19]
the Secretary of State makes no mention of the Commission's
response annexed to the report. We ask her to summarise the main
messages and to comment on them.
6.8 It is disappointing that twinning
has not produced better results, but we are encouraged that the
Commission has not waited for a formal report before introducing
improvements. Unfortunately, as has happened before in response
to comments by the Auditors, changes to financial procedures have
ended up with these becoming even more complex.
6.9 As the
Commission must be aware, delays in these procedures are a very
common criticism of its performance by those involved in external
assistance activities generally. Other major international institutions
are also slow, but we ask the Secretary of State what action the
Government and other Member States are taking to encourage change,
so that we do not go on hearing these complaints every year.
6.10 The Secretary
of State does not comment on the ECA's suggestion that the Commission
should consider using fixed-price and lump-sum contracts. We
are uneasy about the use of such inflexible terms in developing
countries, but there may be a case for using them, selectively,
in countries benefiting from PHARE, where local conditions are
more predictable. We ask the Secretary of State for her view.
6.11 Meanwhile,
we do not clear this document.
19 (24623) -. See paragraph 4 of this Report. Back
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