Priority setting

The Accession Partnerships are the cornerstone of the pre­accession strategy. The current Accession Partnerships were adopted in December 1999 for the Central and Eastern European candidate countries, in March 2000 for Cyprus and Malta and in March 2001 for Turkey. On the basis of the analysis presented in the Regular Reports, they set out the priorities for each country to meet the accession criteria. They also indicate the financial assistance available from the Community in support of these priorities and the conditions attached to that assistance. The EU has not had to invoke the conditionality clause of the Accession Partnership Regulation, which relates to insufficient progress towards meeting the accession criteria or failure to meet Association Agreement obligations. Achievements and shortcomings in the implementation of the current Accession Partnership priorities are underlined in each Regular Report.

Proposals to revise the Accession Partnerships are being presented on this occasion by the Commission to the Council at the same time as the Regular Reports. They identify priority areas which need to be addressed in 2002 and 2003. These proposals concern all countries except Turkey where a revision is not necessary due to the recent adoption of the current Accession Partnership. In response to the Accession Partnership, each candidate country establishes and regularly updates its National Programme for the Adoption of the Acquis (NPAA), which indicates the human and financial resources, and the timetable needed to meet the accession priorities. Turkey adopted a national programme for the first time in 2001 while all other candidate countries have updated their programmes during the first semester of 2001. In some countries the NPAAs now form part of the budgetary process. An assessment of each NPAA is included in the corresponding Regular Report.