Europe’s Report on the Effectiveness of the Commission’s projects in the area of Justice and Home Affairs in the Western Balkans
Maarten B. Engwirda , Member of the European Court of Auditors
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the pleasure to present to you today the European Court of Auditor’s Special Report on the Effectiveness of the Commission’s projects in the area of justice and home affairs in the Western Balkans. This is the result of the Court’s second performance audit on the EU assistance to the Western Balkans. The focus of this audit was on the justice and home affairs sector.
The important issues for the EU in all Western Balkan countries are secure borders, rule of law and fighting corruption. Therefore the justice and home affairs sector is one of the most relevant areas of the EU assistance to these countries and a significant part of EU spending in the Western Balkans is devoted to justice and home affairs programmes. Since 2001 around 500 million euro have been spent on the justice and home affairs sector through the CARDS programme, representing around 10% of the total CARDS budget .
The common strategic objective of the audited projects was to reinforce the rule of law in the western Balkans. The Court concluded that unlike the previous accession programmes, the Commission has rightly prioritised the justice and home affairs sector and attempted to tackle these important structural reforms earlier in the enlargement process.
The audit covered the following countries in the Western Balkans: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. On Croatia we will carry out a separate audit in the coming years.
Before coming to the conclusions of this Special report , I want to give you a brief reminder of the context in which the EU and on its behalf the European Commission operates with its support to the Western Balkans.
Until 2006, the financing was made through the CARDS programme, the instrument under review in this audit by the Court. This was the tool for supporting the so called Stabilisation and Association Process (SAp) which constitutes the EU’s policy framework for the Western Balkan countries. Three goals are targeted with this progressive partnership:
* Stabilisation and a swift transition to a market economy,
* Promotion of regional cooperation and
* Prospect of EU accession.
The same main aims based on the SAp still are valid for the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA) which has taken over since January 2007.
The main objectives of the CARDS programme were consequently to contribute to the recipients’ participation in the Stabilisation and Association Process and to increase the responsibility of the Western Balkan countries and entities in relation to that process. CARDS was designed to encourage sustainable and EU compatible reform, consolidate stability and to bring the region closer to the European Union. This is mainly done through investment and institution building projects. Whereas investments are rather straightforward, i t should be kept in mind that institution building in the justice and home affairs area in these countries implies reform, and reform implies resistance. The status quo will be defended by major vested interests, what makes EU-support or intervention in this area politically sensitive.
The audit, on the result of which this Special Report is reporting upon, covered both investment and institution-building projects in the four justice and home affairs sub-areas: asylum and migration, integrated border management, judiciary and police. It assessed f irstly , the extent to which needs in the justice and home affairs area had been properly identified and the projects were relevant to these identified needs, and secondly , the extent to which the intended outputs had been delivered and the expected results were achieved and sustainable .
Now, what are the results of the audit and the recommendations the Court is giving for consideration?
The Court overall concludes rather positively on the Commission’s management of justice and home affairs projects, under the circumstances, by stating that “ against the background of a difficult political and organisational environment, the Commission’s management of justice and home affairs projects has been largely effective”. However, one major area of concern is the sustainability of project results. The reason for this was continued political weakness and lack of commitment (ownership) by the beneficiaries, as most project initiatives did not come from within the region but from the Commission or other external stakeholders. B oth types of intervention: investments and institution-building are considered to be unlikely to be sustainable in the Court’s conclusion.
In terms of output, we consider the investment projects to have been more successful than the institution-building projects. Although also not all investment projects achieved fully satisfactory results and the sustainability is at risk, the investment assistance financed by the Commission made a relevant and useful contribution to the national infrastructure and institutions. Institution building projects did only partially achieve their intended results, and sustainability of the results is unlikely.
Another important result r elates to the comparison of the performance of the different management approaches used, meaning the European Reconstruction Agency on the one hand and the EU Commission delegations on the other hand. The audit concludes that there was no significant difference in the degree of success between them.
On the basis of these observations, the Court makes the following recommendations which could help the Commission to provide more efficient and effective assistance and enhance sustainability:
Firstly, when designing the justice and home affairs projects, the Community support should comply with annual programme objectives – as an example: the future joint border crossing points should be given priority as this would foster regional cooperation;
Secondly, investment projects should be matched more closely with institution-building projects
Thirdly, all donors active in the area, including the Commission as the main donor, should coordinate better with each other – for example one donor could fund or co-fund a project designed by an other donor;
Fourthly, the procurement process for equipment should be reconsidered by the donor community. Wherever possible, joint investment pools managed by the recipient countries should be considered.
Concerning Project sustainability the Court proposes that it could be improved if beneficiary involvement were increased, no projects were launched without a maintenance plan, the Commission monitored more closely the distribution and evaluated the use of EU-funded equipment and infrastructure and finally, the delivery of technical assistance was adequately complemented by active encouragement for institutional change.
The Court has over the years carried out a series of audits on the important issue of EU-assistance to candidate countries and potential candidate countries. Through our audits we aim to contribute to improving the effectiveness of established EU-policy instruments. In this respect I want to stress once more that the lack of commitment from authorities in many of the countries we visited in the context of this particular audit is a major obstacle to achieving the objective of this assistance programme: to support the countries to comply with the Copenhagen criteria for membership and to align with the EU-acquis communautaire.
If you have questions, now is the opportunity to pose them.
Topics: corruption, European Commission, Governance, home affairs, IPA, justice, politics, SAP, structural reforms, Western Balkans
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