Summary

The ten Central and Eastern European Countries that have applied for membership in the European Union (also known as the  Candidate Countries), have to meet standards given in the Community Acquis. The costs for full compliance with the Environmental Acquis, particularly with "investment heavy directives,"are considerable and have been estimated at EURO 120 billion.

At the 1998 Aarhus "Environment for Europe" Conference of the Ministers of the Environment, the Regional Environmental Center (REC) received the mandate to take a lead in supporting the development and implementation of the accession-related investment component of the Work Programme of the Task Force for the Implementation of the Environmental Action Programme (EAP) for Central and Eastern Europe (CEE).

Task 19 focuses on assisting CEE countries  in successfully preparing and implementing accession-related investment strategies. The proposal also aims at implementing the pre-accession related parts of the current EAP Task Force Work Programme.

Objectives

The objectives of the proposal for Task 19 are:

• to strengthen the capacity of the environmental funds, to optimise the funds' accession related investments and to assess future trends in the post-accession period; and
   
• to assist the ten Candidate Countries to develop and implement pre-accession environmental investment strategies and to increase their  project preparation capacity.