TWINNING

Period: 1998 -

Budget: EUR 157 million / year

The Twinning programme aims to help beneficiary countries in building their institutional and administrative capacity to implement the acquis communautaire to the same standards as Member States. Twinning provides the framework for administrations and semi-public organisations in the beneficiary countries to work with their counterparts in Member States. Together they develop and implement a project that targets the transposition, enforcement and implementation of a specific part of the acquis communautaire.

The main feature of a Twinning project is that it sets out to deliver specific and guaranteed results and not to foster general co-operation. It involves the secondment of experts from the Member States to the administrations of the candidate countries and within limits, to the administrations of potential candidate countries. Twinning can only work, if the Beneficiary Country is fully determined to carry out the reforms and reorganization needed in accordance with the policy priorities set in the context of enlargement or other fields of co-operation with the EU.

The key features of the Twinning programme are;

1. Projects are built around jointly agreed EU policy objectives

2. Beneficiary country retains ownership of the project

3. Projects yield concrete operational results linked to adoption of the EU acquis

4. Projects involve a peer-to-peer exchange of hands-on public sector expertise and experience

5. Projects are genuine partnerships fostering close co-operation

EU Member States, Acceding Countries, Candidate Countries and Potential Candidate Countries are the target countries for the Twinning programme. Local and regional authorities, training centers, federations and unions are eligible for funding.

Twinning's website