Phare Funded Participation of Candidate Countries in Community Programmes : Thematic evaluation of Phare Support allocated in 2001-2003 ; Phare form Pre-accession to accession

This Thematic Report on Candidate Country Participation in the Community Programmes was prepared by the EMS Consortium1 at the request of the Evaluation Unit (E3) of DG Enlargement. Phare support to the Community Programmes has not been the subject of specific Interim Evaluations of the Phare National Programmes and therefore a special methodology was developed. Following an initial inception period, a draft Inception Note was circulated to relevant stakeholders in early July 2003. A ‘kick off’ meeting was subsequently held on 29 July 2003 to discuss the contents of the Inception Note, the methodology of the study, the selection of the sample and the timing of the exercise (minutes of the ‘kick off’ meeting are contained in Annex 2) and a revised Inception Note submitted on September 11th, 2003. The main research for the Report was carried out from October to December 2003. ... Community Programmes are integrated actions adopted by the European Union to promote co-operation amongst its Member States. Since 2000 participation in these Programmes has been progressively opened up to the Candidate Countries. The main condition of participation is that each country makes its own contribution to the cost of the programme. In the case of the candidate countries up to 10% of the Phare budget can be used to pay all or part of the ‘entry ticket’. The objectives of this thematic report are to: Identify factors affecting level of participation of Candidate Countries in the Community Programmes; Identify impacts resulting from participation; Examine the effectiveness of special actions taken to promote Candidate Countries’ participation; Propose a methodology for considering the experience of the Candidate Countries with the existing evaluation framework of the Community Programmes.