Six and a half years after Bulgaria
signed its Association Agreement with the European Union, in
December 1999 its relations with the EU took a crucial step forward
– the European Council at Helsinki invited the country to start
membership negotiations in 2000. 1999 also marked a broadened
involvement of non-governmental actors in the integration
efforts.
For CSD’s European Program 1999 was
an year of sustained efforts for keeping representatives of
informed opinion in Bulgaria in touch with developments in the EU
and for producing and disseminating a body of expert analysis on
the various aspects of accession.
I. Facilitating
Dialogue
The European Program’s building
bridges activities were implemented in two directions – bringing
policy makers and public officials to a dialogue with the expert
and NGO community on the crucial accession policies, and providing
forum for discussion with EU experts and officials.
At the request of the Ministry of
Regional Development, CSD hosted a public discussion of the
National Development Plan (NDP) 2000-2006. The NDP is part of the
preparation of the country for using the EU pre-accession funds.
The discussion meeting was attended by representatives of the
Council of Ministers, the district administrations, the Bulgarian
National Bank, the trade unions, business associations,
non-governmental organizations, universities, the EU Delegation to
Bulgaria, the UN Development Program, Bulgarian and foreign
donors.
The discussion outlined the most
important problems and prerequisites for balancing national and
European priorities: a tax reform which will stimulate investment
activities by Bulgarian enterprises; completion of the agrarian
reform and consolidation of land property; comprehensive assessment
of the accession costs and their socio-economic
implications.
Mr. Vassil Garnizov, Deputy Minister
of Regional Development, pointed out five main priorities of the
National Development Plan:
• Completion of the institutional
reform;
• Increasing the competitiveness of
the Bulgarian economy;
• Human resources
development;
• Reduction of regional
differences;
• Infrastructure
development.
As a follow-up to the meeting, CSD
collected and processed a number of written suggestions and
comments to the Plan by interested organizations throughout the
country. The feedback was then provided to the Central Coordination
Unit at the Ministry which was responsible for the drafting
process. The NDP was subsequently adopted by the Council of
Ministers.
CSD’s Forum Europe 2000
started in January with a visit by Mr. Eric Boel, International
Secretary to the Social-Democratic Party in Denmark and Foreign
Policy Adviser to the Danish Prime Minister. One of the emphases of
Mr. Boel’s presentation was the importance of the security
dimension of the enlargement of the European Union. In this aspect,
it is of no less significance for stability in Europe than the
expansion of NATO. He shared the Danish experience in this respect,
in particular with the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty,
pointing out that the majority of the Danes support the enlargement
to the East. The participants asked Mr. Boel about the role of
political parties in the process of European integration.
Answering, Mr. Boel commented specifically on the contacts of the
Danish Social Democrats with their colleagues in the applicant
countries. In this context there were two major goals pursued by
his party – promotion of multiparty democracy in these countries
and promotion of social-democratic values.
In February guest speaker at Forum
Europe 2000 was Mr. Claude Cornuau, Senior Councillor at the
European Court of Auditors, and Adviser to the European Commission
for Institution Building of Candidate Countries to the European
Union. Mr. Cornuau is author of the twining mechanism, which is
part of the institution building assistance of the European Union
for the applicant countries. Mr. Cornuau outlined the policy and
institutional context of twining. It is an initiative of the
European Commission to assist the applicant countries in acquiring
the independent capacity to adopt, implement and enforce the full
acquis in accordance with Agenda 2000, before accession to the
European Union. Twinning will involve precise, timed and budgeted
work programs, aimed initially at certain key sectors –
agriculture, environment, finance, and justice and home affairs.
Mr. Cornuau made a distinction between two groups of member states
from the point of view of institution building assistance – those
having more advanced “acquis culture”, i.e. the older member states
with longer experience in implementing the EU legislation, and
those with “accession culture”, i.e. with more recent experience in
accession preparations. Answering questions by the participants,
Mr. Cornuau pointed out the importance of the participation of
non-administrative bodies in the institution building exercise. It
was institution, not simply administration building that twining is
aimed to achieve, and non-governmental organizations are a key
partner in the process.
Mr. Eric Boel
(center) at CSD’s Forum Europe 2000.
On July 2, CSD’s European Program
hosted a meeting of the Europe 2000 Forum with Ms. Bridget
Czarnota, Director of the Technical Assistance Information Exchange
Office (TAIEX) of the European Commission. TAIEX, intended to
provide a range of services to the applicant countries, was created
in 1995, following the completion and publication of the White
Paper of the Commission on the integration of the associated
countries in the internal market of the Union, which was also
coordinated by Ms. Czarnota. Initially designed to provide
assistance to the executive on issues of the single market, TAIEX
has now expanded its range to include the whole of acquis
communautaire providing assistance to all legal entities in the
applicant countries. One of the most significant developments at
TAIEX is a movement from the provision of assistance on legislation
to fostering the establishment of partnerships between institutions
from member states and the applicant countries. Thus the office is
seeking to address the process of approximation not merely as a
legal exercise but in its entirety from development to
implementation.
Ms. Czarnota stressed that it is not
sufficient to rely on mechanisms which serve the accession needs of
the applicant countries from Brussels. Assistance exchanges need to
be driven by the countries themselves exercising stronger ownership
of the process.
Ms. Bridget Czarnota, Director of the European Commission’s
TAIEX service at the Forum Europe 2000 breakfast
meeting.
CSD has also been
active in networking with other policy institutes in CEE. In early
1999, the Bertelsmann Foundation and the World Bank launched a
collaborative initiative aimed at enhancing the involvement of
policy institutes from the CEE countries in the enlargement
process. The initiative will establish a network of institutes
which will maintain an informal cross-border dialogue among
governments, policy institutes and civil society on a number of EU
accession issues. CSD and the Economic Policy Institute were
invited to participate from Bulgaria.
As a first step, the
network collaborated in drafting study reports on the dynamics of
“winners and losers” of EU integration in CEE. Country reports were
commissioned to various institutes which were then summarized in
three papers – on the five CEE countries, on Bulgaria and Romania
and on the Baltic states. The papers were presented at a conference
Towards European Integration: Network for Integration of Central
and Eastern European Countries into the European Union
organized by the Bertelsmann Foundation and the World Bank in
Guetersloh, Germany in November 1999. The purpose of the conference
was to identify a number of areas of interest to the network on the
basis of the research carried out in the “winners and losers”
analysis. The areas include institutional development, promotion of
intra-accession countries trade and regional cooperation, the
relation between growth and convergence. These will be addressed in
a discussion forum based on the network’s Internet site
(www.euintegration.net). The network will hold a number of meetings
annually to be hosted by the member institutes in their respective
countries.
The timing of
accession will be crucial to the winner-loser balance in Bulgaria
and Romania. Meeting the Copenhagen criteria is a goal for both
countries but in the pre-accession periodthey have growing needs of
finacial and investment support. In the European Commission’s
Agenda 2000 it is foreseen that beyond 2001 there will be some
diverging trends for financial support to new members and for the
later entrants. If this becomes actual policy, then new members
will be at an advantage in terms of financial support compared with
those who join later. This will make the task of catching up for
Bulgaria and Romania all the more difficult.
Excerpt from the paper
“Winners and Losers of European Integration: The Case of
Bulgaria and Romania”
In March, CSD was visited by a World Bank delegation
including Mr. Johannes Linn, World Bank Vice President, Mr. Pieter
Stek, Executive Director, and Mr. Andrew Vorkink, Country Director
for Bulgaria and Romania. The discussions focused on the role of
non-governmental organizations in the Bank’s work in Bulgaria,
specifically as regards the Bank’s assistance to Bulgaria’s EU
accession efforts. Dr. Ognian Shentov, CSD President, hosted a
lunch for the World Bank delegation, joined by Dr. Lubomir
Christov, Adviser to the Executive Director, and Mr. Thomas
O’Brien, Head of the World Bank Mission to Sofia, other
representatives of the Mission, several Bulgarian NGOs,
representatives of government agencies and the judiciary. Issues
discussed included the legal environment for NGOs, corruption in
the context of development, Bulgaria’s EU accession and the Bank’s
assistance strategy in this
respect.
* * *
In 1999 the European Program continued several years of
cooperation with the Bologna Center of Johns Hopkins University.
Under an arrangements with the Center, the European Program hosts
student interns who spend several months with CSD carrying out
research and helping with the preparation of the Program’s
publications.
II. Policy
Studies
Developing and publishing policy analyses and
recommendations in the key accession areas is one of the priorities
of the European Program. In 1999, in continuation of the work
started in the volume “Bulgaria and the European Union - Towards an
Institutional Infrastructure”, it published five papers in the
field of EU integration (also available at
www.csd.bg/publications.htm):
• Bulgaria’s Participation in EU Structural
Funds;
• Social Policy Aspects of Bulgaria’s EU
Accession;
• Preparing for Bulgaria’s EU Accession
Negotiations;
• The Role of Political Parties in Accession to the
EU;
• Bulgaria’s Capital Markets in the Context of Accession:
A Status Report.
Mr. Johannes Linn, World Bank
Vice President and Mr. Andrew Vorkink, Country Director for
Bulgaria and Romania meet with CSD President, Dr. Ognian Shentov
(left).
The first of these reports on preparing for EU’s
structural policies was published in September. The report
examines the necessary organizational, administrative, legal and
financial measures Bulgaria has to undertake in the next few years
in order to fulfill the prerequisites for participation in the EU
structural funds. The publication outlines: a) the main steps of
the pre-accession strategy for the preparation of Bulgaria’s
participation in EU structural funds with a view to the existing
problems and achievements in the spheres of regional policy,
transportation, telecommunications, the labor market, and social
policy; b) the new financial instruments of the pre-accession
policy, ISPA and SAPARD; c) conclusions and recommendations of
practical importance, and priority tasks in each sector, some of
which were already carried out in 1999, such as the National
Development Plan 2000-2006, the National Plan for Development of
Agriculture and Rural Regions, etc. A EU Structural Funds: A
Brief Guide was published as an addition to the
report.
The paper on the social policy aspects of accession
, discusses a number of key issues: What is the scope of the
economic and social criteria for integration in the social sphere?
To what extent does the Bulgarian social protection system
correspond to the European models and values? What are the
prospects for development of the social reform in the light of the
strategy for accession to the European
Union?
The reform of the social protection system in Bulgaria is
analyzed within the context of the pre-accession strategy. The main
conclusion is that the national legislation meets the substantial
requirements of the European Social Charter signed in 1998. The
insufficient financial and administrative resources are obstacles
to the effective exercise of the social rights. They determine the
main gaps in the field of social protection, the removal of which
is a condition for membership: pension reform aiming at reduction
of pension burden for the active population and work incentive
promotion; investment in the active labor market programs;
practical enforcement of the principle of equal treatment in the
employment sector and job creation for minorities and disadvantaged
groups; institutional strengthening and injection of resources in
the health sector.
At its Helsinki meeting in December, the European Council
decided to convene bilateral intergovernmental conferences in
February 2000 to begin negotiations with Bulgaria. CSD’s paper on
preparing for negotiations with the EU was developed in
anticipation of this decision and addressed the topical issue of
preparing the country for effective negotiations. The study
emphasizes some lessons from previous EU enlargements, and their
relevance to the current stage – customs union, agricultural and
regional policies, fisheries, environment and health care
standards, state aids, fiscal issues, etc. The paper discusses the
impact of enlargements – the last one in particular – on the Union,
especially on its institutional arrangements. Among the lessons to
be drawn from previous enlargements, the study highlights
that:
- negotiations are conducted with each candidate country
individually and it is for that country to find the best
solutions;
- in the course of negotiations, the EU would not allow
any candidate country to export significant new problems to the
Union;
- openly stating any problems could only bring dividends
during the negotiations;
- political support from the capital city would be
decisive throughout the process of
negotiations;
- public opinion would play an ever increasing role in the
process of negotiations;
- clear fixing arrangements reached at each stage would
warrant the successful movement from one stage in the negotiations
to the next.
In April 1999, CSD was commissioned by the World Bank to
develop a background report on the status of the Bulgarian
capital market, particularly as regards preparations for
accession to the EU. The project was envisaged as part of the
Bank’s contribution to the enlargement process of the Union towards
the CEE countries. The report contributes to the discussion of
capital market reform in Bulgaria in preparation for eventual
integration into the European Union. The report views accession on
two levels. The first is whether the necessary capital market
institutions and legislation are in
place.
The second one is whether capital markets are functioning
in a manner that supports economic growth and development. The
report also analyzes the equity market, including the concentration
of ownership and investment companies, the capital market
institutions - the stock exchange, investment intermediaries, the
Central Depository, and the Buldarian National Securities
Commission. Particular attention is paid to the securities
legislation and its harmonization with the EU acquis and the issues
of corporate governance.
* * *
In both policy analysis and dissemination of results, and
facilitating the policy dialogue the Center’s European Program has
provided an indispensable public service in the field of European
integration. In this, the Program meets an apparent need in
Bulgaria and its efforts would be even more relevant now that the
country enters a crucial period of accession
negotiations.
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