Harnessing the transition experience of the New EU member states in EU’s external relations: From policy to implementation

The European Consensus for Development sets in Article 33 that “the EU will capitalise on new Member States’ experience (such as transition management) and help strengthen the role of these countries as new donors” which since then was reiterated in different ocasions. Since 2008, the EC has been collecting the transition experiences and developed the European Transition Compendium which should provide tools for using the transition experience for supporting political and economic reforms in partner countries, especially in the European Neighbourhood and the Pre-Accession Countries. Main areas for implementation should be democratic institution building, support for democratic processes, protection of human rights, strengthening civil society, cooperation with local governments, independence of media etc.

The incorporation of transition experiences in EU policy and new instruments for the systematic use of transition experiences in the framework of EU financial instruments 2014-2020 is now requested by NMS such as the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Romania, Slovak Republic and Slovenia. The issue will also be raised from the Member States in the Structured Dialogue to be taken into consideration for the future architecture of development cooperation. The so-called Non-Paper on the Transition Experience is available here (návrh diskusního dokumentu).

Information provided by Christine Bedoya, TRIALOG