The agreement envisages the transfer of responsibility for the pre-accession assistance programmes PHARE, CARDS and ISPA to the Croatian authorities.
The EC thus shows that Zagreb is capable of efficiently using and managing the pre-accession funds.
In the period from 2001 to 2005 Croatia used more than 500 million euros of EU aid that was part of the PHARE programme for technical assistance in reform processes, the ISPA programme for capital investments in environmental protection and transport, the SAPARD programme for support and incentives in agriculture and rural development, and the CARDS programme for development and stabilisation.
Before the signing of the agreement the assistance was centralised, which means that the EC was in charge of implementing the projects. As an EU candidate Croatia now assumes full responsibility and takes over the management of the assistance programmes.
Following successful accreditation by EC auditing services in the second half of last year, the EC made a decision to transfer the management of PHARE, CARDS and ISPA programmes to the Croatian authorities, thus enabling them to gradually take over the procedures of programming, applying for and implementing those programmes.
The EC will retain only some of the functions, such as previous supervision of the application procedure and the signing of contracts in the near future.