Brussels, 13/01/2015 (Agence Europe) - Overall, the European Commission is managing pre-accession support to Serbia effectively, according to the Court of Auditors report published on Tuesday 13 January. The Court of Auditors also stated in this report - which focuses on the EU's 2007-2013 pre-accession aid to Serbia - that the financial pre-accession assistance to Serbia along with other forms of support “effectively helps Serbia to implement social and economic reforms and to improve governance in the country”.
Based on the experience gained in other instruments for pre-accession assistance (IPA) beneficiary countries, the Commission is putting increasing emphasis on governance issues in planning its financial and non-financial assistance to Serbia, the Court of Auditors stated.
Since 2007, the EU's financial support to Serbia through the IPA has amounted to approximately €170 million per year (in other words, a total of €1.2 billion over the seven years). A quarter of this funding was used in the area of governance which, according to the Commission, is the most challenging area for Serbia. The EU complements the IPA funding with some non-financial means to help Serbia prepare for EU membership.
In the view of the Court of Auditors, (1) the Commission has been managing IPA projects effectively. The audited projects produced their planned outputs but suffered from weaknesses regarding their design, implementation and sustainability. When drawing up the latest IPA annual programmes, the Commission took steps to address the shortcomings identified in the earlier IPA projects; (2) the Commission was effective in managing non-financial assistance to Serbia in the area of governance. “Most of the projects reviewed by the Court of Auditors had indirectly contributed to better governance and/or to the fight against corruption”, the Court of Auditors notes. “Despite gradual improvement in managing the IPA, the Commission needs to further improve the second generation IPA used in the 2014-2020 period,” said Szabolcs Fazakas, the Court of Auditors member responsible for the report. (LC)