General Info: What is IPA?


By Ms. Elke DALL on Nov 13, 2006
Status: Public

The Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA) aims at providing targeted assistance to candidate countries and potential candidate countries for membership to the EU. Hence, all the countries of the Western Balkans are included in this instrument. It replaces the 2000-06 financial instrument for the Western Balkans CARDS and other pre-accession financial instruments. IPA concerns countries with candidate status (currently Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Turkey) and potential candidate status (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro including Kosovo according to UNSCR 1244).

There are five different components:

  • Transition Assistance and Institution Building,
  • Regional and Cross-Border Cooperation,
  • Regional Development,
  • Human Resources Development,
  • Rural Development,

the first two of which will apply to both potential candidate and candidate countries, the last three will apply to candidate countries only. As regards financial allocations, IPA will provide a total amount of 11,468 billion euro (current prices) over the 2007-2013 period. Each year, the Commission informs the European Parliament and the Council on its intentions regarding the breakdown of the total envelope. (ed)

Article published in eJournal fall 06.

Update: The council decision establishing IPA can be found in the document service /doc/882.html.

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