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Commission adopts multi-annual planning of financial assistance to the Western Balkans and Turkey The Commission has completed today the strategic planning of EU financial support for 2008-2010 to the candidate countries and potential candidates: Croatia, Turkey, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and Kosovo[1]. This financial assistance aims to enhance political and economic reform and development to realise their European perspective. For 2008-2010, the overall indicative amount of EU financial assistance under the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA) is €4.471 billion.

EU leaders are meeting in Brussels on Thursday and Friday to discuss the best ways to get out of the economic crisis. But despite some calls to spend more to support the bloc's ailing economies, most of the attention is expected to be focused on the need for better regulation of the financial sector and on "fine-tuning" the existing European economic stimulus package.

In the face of the persisting economic turmoil, France and Germany's leaders sent a letter to the Czech EU presidency and to the president of the European Commission on Tuesday reiterating what they see as an urgent need to reform the financial system. "The top priority is building up the new global financial architecture. The European Union must affirm a common position and take the lead in this process," French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel wrote.

ZAGREB -- The European Commission (EC) has temporarily frozen Croatian Phare projects. It has also reduced the funds allocated to the country via the IPA program by EUR 5mn because of weaknesses in creating a decentralized system of management of projects backed by EU funds.

In its 2007 progress report on Croatia, the EC said that the country had shown great weaknesses last year in implementing a decentralized system for management of pre-accession assistance, said Nagy and warned that Zagreb had to deal with these weaknesses as soon as possible.

On July 14, the European Union's Council of Ministers adopted a new framework for providing aid to candidate countries and would-be candidates. Called the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (I.P.A.), it aims to consolidate several aid programs, thereby increasing efficiency, and better targeting the funds. It sounds like a sensible idea, but it could be a mixed bag for the official candidate countries — Croatia, Macedonia, and Turkey — as well as candidate-hopefuls Albania, Bosnia, Montenegro, and Serbia.