First ECENA Plenary Meeting Zagreb, 19-20 January 2006 Agenda Item 11 Strengthening Environmental Institutions in New Member States, Bulgaria and Romania – Preliminary Results ECENA Secretariat

Project Funded by the World Bank with support from Bank-Netherlands Partnership Program Tasks Task 1: Summary of Tools and Methods used to assess environmental capacity within the context of the EU Acquis in EU-25 Task 2: Survey of EU-8 plus 2 in institutional capacity strengthening; and case studies to demonstrate findings Task 3: Research on international benchmarking experience for application to West Balkans environmental compliance activities

Objectives of the Project To study systematically the experience of New Member States in institutional building and strengthening in relation to EU accession and implementation of EU acquis Identify Best Practices in institutional strengthening Create a knowledge basis for targeted institutional development in the Western Balkans Promote environmental capacity benchmarking in the West Balkan

Task 1: Tools to Assess Env. Capacity in EU Accession Partnerships and National Programs for the Adoption of the Acquis Pre-accession Screening Progress monitoring - The Regular Reports on Progress and Progress Monitoring Reports EU Peer Reviews Twinning arrangements Annual reporting on implementation of Community law Tools within the Sustainable Cities/Urban Environment Initiative – local level EM(A)S Certification for Municipalities

Task 2: Institutional Capacity Strengthening: Methodology Country basic profiles 2 focus groups per country Country issue-based reports Semi-structured interviews Country survey Who? – key people from envir. institutions on central and local level: MoE, Environmental Agencies, Integrated Prevention Agencies, Inspectorates, Ministries of Agriculture, Ministries of Energetic, etc.

Task 2: Preliminary Results (1) Sources for long-term env. financing is needed Need for implementation plans before transposition of the EU directives Need for mechanism for involvement of stakeholders on any draft law from the very beginning Negotiate division of responsibilities for areas and directives on national level at the very beginning Pay careful attention to cooperation when more then one ministry have responsibilities related to one directive Foreign inst. support: request experts who are well-prepared for the specificities of the country

Task 2: Preliminary Results (2) Keep the same people in institutions for transposition and implementation work Need for good cooperation and consultation with regional and local level Need for good cooperation between ministries: working groups, etc. Draft logical plan for transposition, starting from the horizontal directives e.g. EIA and IPPC, make scenarios of how the whole regulatory system can work and then go towards greater details

Task 2: Preliminary Results (3) Negotiators for individual directives in Brussels should be very well-prepared and have excellent command of English Need for resources for new staff and increasing the qualification of existing staff Provide training to municipal staff to build their own expertise for: revenue generation; project preparation and evaluation, project implementation and reporting according to EU requirements

(4) Sharing Programme Results Task 3 Activities (1) Inclusion of a separate block on benchmarking within ECENA Peer Review (2) Developing Regional Guidelines tailored to W. Balkans on Assessment Progress Monitoring and Benchmarking (3) Conduct a Regional Training on Progress Monitoring and Benchmarking (4) Sharing Programme Results

Outputs Tasks 3 (1) Peer Review data on progress monitoring and benchmarking in the W. Balkans (2) Training Manual on Progress Monitoring and Benchmarking (3) Regional Training on Progress Monioring and Benchmarking (4) Programme results shared with IMPEL, REPIN, INECE and AECEN

Thank you!