A multidisciplinary team of experts will give support to the Serbian Government to enhance its administrative and technical capacities in relation to the management of the Instrument for Pre-Accession (IPA) under a Decentralized Implementation System (DIS)
The Regional Office for Southeast Europe of EPTISA, as a member of a Consortium formed by the companies Euroconsultants and Price Waterhouse Coopers, has recently been awarded a new contract in the Republic of Serbia. The project, entitled “Further Support for the Implementation of a Decentralised Implementation System” and financed by the European Union’s IPA programme, is aimed to prepare the Government of the Republic of Serbia for taking full responsibility for the planning, implementation and management of all the future EU assistance granted to the country, a step required for all future Member States.
This project has a great importance for the further EU integration process of Serbia. Currently, the management of all the Pre-Accession Assistance programmes is performed by the EU Delegation in Belgrade. However, and as stated in the IPA Regulation and in the IPA Agreement signed between the Serbian Government and the EC, one of the main objectives of IPA is to support the process towards the full decentralisation of all EU assistance to the beneficiary countries. That means the complete transfer from the EU Delegation in Serbia to the Serbian Government of the management over all the IPA funds. To achieve this, the Delegation of the European Union to the Republic of Serbia decided to support the efforts of the Serbian Government to gradually take over all the responsibilities for a proper management of all the EU funds.
Thanks to this 2 Million Euro technical assistance project, during the next two years a group of experts from EPTISA will provide support to improve the capacities of all the Serbian institutions involved in the management and implementation of EU-funded programmes, in order to help them meet all the necessary requirements for an eventual DIS Accreditation. In this regard, the expert team will perform a wide variety of activities, such as the development of financial management and control systems, the implementation of procedures and tools required by the DIS, the setting up of different DIS organizational structures, the preparation of the Accreditation Packages for the IPA Component III and IV, and several other initiatives aiming to the institutional capacity building and human resources development.
For more information about this project, please contact EPTISA’s Regional Office for Southeast Europe at eptisasee@eptisa.com