European Commission
Bulgaria

The Phare programme is one of the three pre-accession instruments financed by the European Union to assist the applicant countries of Central and Eastern Europe in their preparations for joining the European Union.

The PHARE programme was initially covering 10 countries: the 8 new Member States: the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia, as well as Bulgaria and Romania, assisting them in a period of massive economic restructuring and political change.

Until 2000 the countries of the Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina and The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) were also beneficiaries of Phare. However, as of 2001 the CARDS programme has provided financial assistance to these countries.

Following the 1993 Copenhagen Council’s invitation to Central and Eastern European countries to apply for membership, Phare support was reoriented by focusing entirely on the pre-accession priorities highlighted in the Road Maps and the Accession Partnerships which establish the overall priorities the country must address to prepare for accession and the resources available to help them do so.

Phare’s objectives are:

• Strengthening public administrations and institutions to function effectively inside the European Union.
• Promoting convergence with the European Union’s extensive legislation (the acquis communautaire) and reduce the need for transition periods.
• Promoting Economic and Social Cohesion.

Around 30% of Phare resources are allocated for Institution Building. This is defined as the process of helping the candidate countries to develop the structures, strategies, human resources and management skills needed to strengthen their economic, social, regulatory and administrative capacity. This assistance is provided specifically to help the candidate countries to implement the acquis communautaire, to prepare for participation in EU policies and to fulfil the requirements of the Copenhagen political criterion: the stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorites.

The resources are mainly deployed and implemented with Member States through the instrument of Twinning. Twinning projects involve the secondment of EU experts to the acceding and candidate countries on specific projects. They are made available for a period of at least one year to work on a project in the corresponding Ministry in a candidate country. They are supported by a senior project leader in their home administration, who is responsible for ensuring project implementation and co-ordination of input from the MemberState. Twinning not only provides technical and administrative assistance to new MemberStates and candidate countries, but also helps to build long-term relationships between existing and future Member States and brings new MemberStates and candidate countries into wider contact with the diversity of practice inside the EU.

National Programmes account for most of the Phare budget and are agreed bilaterally with each partner country.

Accession Partnerships and Regular Reports allow the EU to identify weaknesses in the candidate countries’ ability to adopt the acquis or fulfil their accession criteria, and give indications of the type of actions that need to be undertaken. Each candidate country then draws up its own National Programme for the Adoption of the Acquis (NPAA), which indicates the timetable required to rectify these problems as well as an estimate of the human and financial resources that need to be allocated for this purpose. This must be endorsed by the European Union, at which point it becomes a National Development Programme (NDP), which is the basis for Phare programming. 2003 is the final year for National Programmes for the new Member States from 2004, but this process continues until 2006 with Bulgaria and Romania until their accession to the EU in 2007.

Phare CBC was introduced in 1994 to assist border regions in the applicant countries overcome their specific development problems and integrate more closely with the European Union, with other countries of Central and Eastern Europe, and within their own national economies. A long term aim of CBC was thus to accelerate the economic convergence of applicant countries with the European Union in a balanced manner that prevents the emergence of peripheral economic zones, and to prepare candidate countries for future participation in the INTERREG programme.

Between 2000 and 2003, € 163 million was available each year to the Phare CBC programme, representing approximately 10% of the total yearly Phare commitment. In 2003, this figure was supplemented by an External Border Initiative (€33 Million Euros) aiming to support CBC-type investments at the future external border of the EU as well as to help acceding countries to prepare for INTERREG and Neighbourhood Programmes upon accession.

In order to deepen InstitutionBuilding in key areas (such as support for civil society, support to customs or participation in Community programmes), assistance previously provided under Multi-Country Programmes has increasingly been integrated into national programmes. As a result, multi-country programmes are now used only in cases where their adequacy is specifically demonstrated or where they can be considered as the most efficient and effective delivery instrument in view of economies of scale or the need to promote regional co-operation. Consequently, a certain number of multi-country programmes continue to be implemented. The largest of these have been developed in co-operation with International Financial Institutions and deal with the promotion of small and medium-sized enterprises. Other ongoing Multi-country programmes involve, inter alia, TAIEX, Sigma, Monitoring and Evaluation, Statistics, Environment and Institution Building in the field of fighting fraud.

Multi-country programmes are both planned and implemented centrally.

• Financing memoranda and Project Fiches 1998 – 2006
  1. PHARE National Programme
  2. PHARE Cross-border Cooperation
  3. Other financing memoranda
  4. Multibeneficiary actions

• Official website of PHARE programme
• Institutional scheme of management of PHARE programme in Bulgaria