1. 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

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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.

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. (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

10. 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

11. Thank you!