| dc.description.abstract | The overall objective of pre-accession assistance is to support the country's efforts to comply with the Copenhagen accession criteria and to help preparing the country meeting the challenges of future EU membership. Against this background pre-accession assistance for the period 2008-2010 is concentrated on three strategic areas: (1)Support to Institution Building (2)Improve cross-border cooperation (3)Prepare for participation in the Community's cohesion and rural development policy Building on past and ongoing financial assistance and drawing on the Accession Partnership's recommendations the MIPD identifies priorities for making the overall strategy operational. Institution Building is the core activity of component I. And within this component, support to meet the "political criteria" needs to be strengthened reflecting the key priorities as set out in the Accession Partnership. Key challenges to be supported through financial assistance are: the further improvement of governance and the rule of law, the full implementation of the Ohrid Framework Agreement, the need to create a stable and professional civil service, to fight corruption, to ensure full independency, efficiency and accountability of the judiciary and to strengthen the civil society dialogue. Furthermore-, pre-accession assistance aims at supporting economic development and social cohesion and it will help the country in adopting the acquis as well as with building institutional and administrative capacity to transpose, implement and enforce Community standards. And finally, pre-accession assistance shall help preparing the country for decentralised management of EU funds. |
