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- The policy
- How does it work?
- Who does what?
- Projects in focus
- Turkish Cypriot community
- Press corner
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- Acceding country
- Candidate countries
- Potential candidates
ISPA – Instrument for Structural Policies for Pre-Accession
ISPA was designed to address environmental and transport infrastructure priorities identified in the Accession Partnerships with the 10 applicant countries of Central and Eastern Europe. ISPA was established by Council Regulation No. 1267/1999 in June 1999 on the basis of a Commission proposal in Agenda 2000 to enhance economic and social cohesion in the applicant countries of Central & Eastern Europe for the period 2000-2006.
Its main features are that it:
- Only finances major environmental and transport infrastructure projects
- Has a budget of € 452 million for Bulgaria and Romania in 2004. (Until 2003 the overall annual budget for the 10 countries of Central and Eastern Europe was € 1.1 Billion.)
- Comes under the remit of the Directorate General for Regional Policy
Like the Phare programme, the ISPA programme has the aim of Economic & Social Cohesion. ISPA’s exclusive focus on environmental and transport infrastructure measures has subsequently allowed the Phare programme to focus on other aspects of Economic & Social Cohesion, which avoids over-lapping of responsibilities in this field. For the countries that are Member States since May 2004, projects previously financed under ISPA are still under the responsibility of DG Regional Policy as part of its Cohesion Fund policy.