Twinning Contracts
Twinning is an EU institution building instrument developed by the Commission and based on partnership cooperation between public administrations of EU Member States and a Beneficiary Country for the achievement of mandatory results jointly agreed with the Commission.
It was conceived as an instrument for targeted administrative co-operation to assist the pro tempore Candidate Countries to strengthen their administrative and judicial capacity to implement EU legislation as future Member States of the European Union.
It has remained an important pre-accession instrument which is now available for all the candidate countries and pre-candidates benefitting from the Instrument of Pre-accession (IPA). Twinning operations obey specific rules described in the “Twinning Manual”.
Fundamental Principles of all Twinning Projects
The concept of “mandatory results” is a key feature of Twinning. The project is managed by two officials (one from the member country leading the project, and the other one from the state administration of the beneficiary country) and they, together with a resident twinning advisor, represent the backbone of the twinning project. Both project partners commit themselves to work towards mutually agreed results in a joint project implementation process. Resident twinning advisor (RTA) is referred by the member country to the state administration of the beneficiary country for a minimum of 12 months, in which they coordinate the project. The work plan of a twinning project usually includes expert missions, trainings and awareness-raising visits.
The Commission indicated from the outset that Twinning projects should focus on limited and well-defined institutional targets. These “mandatory results” can act as an intermediate benchmark, which constitutes a specific criterion in relation to administrative capacity, as long as there is a jointly agreed target that must be measurable and precise.
At the completion of a Twinning project, the Beneficiary Country should have a significantly improved organisation enabling it to properly fulfil its objectives in relation to the EU acquis or in relation to the relevant area of co-operation with the EU.
The overall goal of Twinning is to produce an operational result in a specific area. Achieving this result requires long and thorough cooperation between the Beneficiary Country and the Member Country, as well as the implementation of all activities necessary to achieve the desired goals.
Twinning Light
Twinning Light is designed to offer a more flexible, mid-term approach (up to eight months) without the presence of a RTA permanently located in the BC’s state administration.
Twinning Light is also used to solve any institutional issue, on a much smaller scale compared to a standard twinning project. Its basic characteristics are reflected in the duration of the contract, which is limited to 8 months (in exceptional cases it can be extended to 10 months), the limited maximum contract value (up to to 250,000 EUR) and the implementation of the project without a resident twinning advisor.