IPA II: the EU’s Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance 2014-2020

SUMMARY OF:

Regulation (EU) No 231/2014 establishing an Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance

WHAT IS THE AIM OF THE REGULATION?

This second phase of the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA II) aims to help countries wishing to join the EU to implement comprehensive reforms to prepare for their membership. This is mainly achieved by aligning their rules and policies with EU standards and practices.

KEY POINTS

The main objective of IPA II is to support beneficiaries in adopting and implementing political, institutional, legal, administrative, social and economic reforms, with a view to EU membership.

Support

Assistance mainly focuses on a selected number of policy areas that will help the beneficiaries to progressively meet EU accession criteria.

Support helps countries to:

strengthen democratic institutions and the rule of law;
reform the judiciary and public administration;
respect fundamental rights and promote gender equality, tolerance and social inclusion;
support regional, macro-regional and cross-border cooperation as well as territorial development;
enhance economic and social development, with a particular focus on small- and medium-sized enterprises;
manage the EU’s internal policies upon accession.

Beneficiaries

IPA II will allow for continued support to candidate countries and potential candidates, namely Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the North Macedonia, Kosovo*, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey.

Efficient and flexible approach

For greater efficiency, the aid is more result-oriented, flexible and tailored to specific needs. The coherence between the financial assistance and the overall progress made in the implementation of the pre-accession strategy will be strengthened.
This will be achieved by:
- ensuring incentives to countries that make progress with their reforms, and in the event of under performance, funds will be reallocated;
- addressing more closely beneficiaries’ needs and better considering their technical and administrative capacities;
- leveraging more funds and exploiting synergies with international financing institutions, with the EU funds acting as a catalyst for investment in local infrastructure.

Budget and implementation

Regulation (EU) No 231/2014 sets the IPA II budget for 2014-2020 at €11.699 billion. Many of the rules and procedures for implementing this programme may be found in Regulation (EU) No 236/2014 (see summary), a cross-cutting regulation which aligns and simplifies the implementation of all EU external instruments.

The European Commission adopted an implementing act, Implementing Regulation (EU) No 447/2014. It sets out uniform conditions to implement Regulation (EU) No 231/2014 and detailed rules which implement Regulation (EU) No 236/2014 with regard to:

methods of implementation,
financial management,
monitoring, evaluation and reporting,
transparency and visibility of IPA II assistance, as well as
specific rules for cross-border cooperation in the policy area ‘regional and territorial cooperation’ and assistance under rural development programmes in the policy area ‘agriculture and rural development’.

Regulation (EU) No 447/2014 was amended by Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/891 to align the rules for implementing cross-border cooperation programmes financed under IPA II with specific measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It allows:

at the request of the managing authority, a co-financing rate of 100% to be applied to expenditure declared in payment applications during the accounting year starting 1 July 2020 and ending 30 June 2021 for one or more priority axes;
on the first day of the accounting year starting 1 July 2021 and ending 30 June 2022, the co-financing rate must come back automatically to the level it was on the day when the request for modification of the co-financing rate was submitted to the Commission;
for cross-border cooperation programmes between one or more EU country and one or more IPA II beneficiary, the managing authority may transfer during the programming period an amount of up to 8% of the allocation as of 1 February 2020 of a priority and no more than 4% of the programme budget to another priority of the same programme. Such transfers must not affect previous years and will be considered to be not substantial and not require a decision of the Commission to amend the programme. They must, however, comply with all regulatory requirements and be approved by the joint monitoring committee in advance. The EU country in question must notify the revised financing plan to the Commission.

FROM WHEN DOES THE REGULATION APPLY?

It has applied since 1 January 2014.

BACKGROUND

For more information, see:

Overview — Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (European Commission).

MAIN DOCUMENT

Regulation (EU) No 231/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 2014 establishing an Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA II) (OJ L 77, 15.3.2014, pp. 11-26)