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9.113 COOMET, EU-Twinning

 

Twinning was developed by the Commission as an EU instrument for institution building and is based on a partnership between Public Administrations of EU Member States and of beneficiary countries. This institutional cooperation yields concrete mandatory results which are jointly agreed with the Commission.

 

Administrative partnership (Twinning) is a European Commission initiative launched in 1998 as part of the preparations for the enlargement of the European Union. Twinning has been designed as a tool for targeted administrative cooperation to help the current candidate countries strengthen their administrative and judicial capacity to implement EU legislation as future Member States (MS) of the European Union. Since then it has become an important Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA) which is now available to all candidate countries and potential candidates: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo*, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey.

 

The extension of the Twinning instrument to other regions coincided with the emergence of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). Developed in view of the EU enlargement of May 2004, the ENP sets a framework for the EU relations with its Eastern and Southern neighbours. The overall objective of the ENP is to support the political and economic reform process and to promote greater economic integration, technical and regulatory convergence and sustainable development. The ENP is complemented by a Regulation which entered into force in 2007 - the European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument (ENPI) - to support its implementation.

 

The ENP covers the Eastern ENP countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine and the Southern ENP countries: Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine*, Tunisia.

 

*) This designation is without prejudice to positions on status and is in line with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244/99 and the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of  Justice on Kosovo's declaratio of independence.

 

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