The CONCORD Working Group (WG) on Enlargement, Pre-Accession and Neighborhood issues met on its annual meeting in Brussels on 19th and 20th March. The focus of the meeting was the strategy and the further steps for the continuation of the WG, as TRIALOG has announced that they withdraw from convening the group. All participants declared wanting to proceed with the WG, in the same format (with 3 subgroups with the 3 geographical scopes: East, South and IPA) and count of the assistance from CONCORD, i.e. a convener that would ease the information flow and would be the link with CONCORD and its other working groups. On the occasion of the meeting two guest speakers were invited: Ivana Cirkovic, Director of the Serbian Governmental Office for Cooperation with NGOs and Bernard Brunet, Member of Cabinet of Štefan Füle, Commissioner for Enlargement.
The subgroup related to IPA issues where BCSDN is regular member focused mainly on the discussion of the future IPA instrument. The overall text of the proposal for IPA instrument was discussed and all the organizations that participated in the consultations opinions. There will be a public hearing in the European Parliament on the 11th of April and the subgroup agreed to provide written comments on the document.
After the discussion in the group and also with Bernard Brunet information related to the financial framework for IPA were provided. The financial allocations to specific sectors of the new IPA regulation-post 2013 are not done yet. For the overall amount, an increase in the financial amount proposed for the IPA2 regulation is announced. The amount in current prices is 14.1 billion Euros, which represents an increase of 8% in real terms.
More information on the working group is available here.