Twinning Projects in the IPA Area

On February 12th and 13th, 2008 an international seminar was held in Budapest with the title “Workshop to promote successful donor Twinning activity” and organised by the Hungarian National Development Agency (NDA) and Formez International Activities Office.
The seminar was conducted by representatives from the NDA, Formez and the Basilicata region with the intention to diffuse best practices throughout the Hungarian administrations and IPA countries with reference to the use of the Administrative Twinning projects as a development and cooperation tool. The seminar was crucial to liaise the potential donors of the Twinning activities (member states: Italy and Hungary) with potential beneficiaries (IPA countries).
The National Contact Points for Twinning from most countries gravitating around the European pre-accession countries, the candidate countries (Croatia, Turkey and Macedonia) as well as numerous representatives from the Hungarian institutions (ministries, agencies and regions) took part.
Owing to the dual perspective of exchange between  administrations from the member countries and the candidate countries, the addresses and remarks of speakers and audience contributed to defining all aspects of the Twinning tool, thus providing each participant with direct experiences and strategic suggestions which are useful for future actions.
The topics discussed intended to transmit both the positive aspects and the limits of the Twinning tool as well as to present the valuable experience of Hungary, a former beneficiary which has now become a donor both of Formez which is the key manager of the Twinning projects in Italy, and the Basilicata region, Italy’s ex Ob.1 region with the greatest experience in Twinning activities. On this occasion, the book “The experience of the Basilicata Region in Twinning Projects” which outlines the region’s experience in the implementation of Administrative Twinning in the last 7 years, was distributed.
From the concluding remarks, it emerged the needs for greater flexibility with regard to the drafting of the project fiches, so as to allow for higher quality proposals by member states as well as the joint need for greater attention by the European Commission on the evaluation of  “intangible “ results of a Twinning project, namely its long-term impact which is often more significant than the mere numeric and quantitative results for achieving the benchmarks foreseen by the contract.
The seminar contributed to establishing a network among the states which were present at the event and encouraged the creation of future collaboration and international partnerships.