Slide 12 of 14

At the beginning of my presentation I pointed out that one of the difficulties of CEECs is the lack of capital. Nobody can dispute this fact. However, I feel that money is sometimes over-emphasized. There are cases where pooling own resources, not only financial but human resources as well, could help a lot.

It is, however, very encouraging to know, that we are not short of funding sources in Europe. The EU has not only set priorities but also coupled it with increased financial assistance. They are available both, for the candidate countries and the New Independent States.

To start with I mention PHARE, the world's largest grant assistance effort for CEE. Phare is the financial instrument of the European Union's pre-accession strategy but has programmes also for Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

TACIS is a similar programme for the former Soviet Union countries and Mongolia. From 2000 it will focus on dialogue-driven programming and increase promotion of investment, among others.

The LIEN (Link Inter European NGOs) programme encourages the development of exchanges and co-operation between NGOs from the Tacis countries and NGOs based in the member states of the EU.

For agricultural development, two special pre-accession assistance programmes will be provided through ISPA (Instrument for Structural Policies for pre-accession) and SAPARD, the special accession programme for agriculture and rural development. The latter aims to help candidate countries deal with the problems of the structural adjustment in their agricultural sectors and rural areas, as well as in the implementation of the acquis comunautaire concerning the CAP and related legislation. SAPARD would come into effect on January 1, 2000.

In 1995, the Technical Assistance Information Exchange Office, known as TAIEX, was set up in Brussels to help guide candidate countries through the maze of EU law in preparation for membership.

The Leonardo da Vinci Programme which is now open to many CEECs as well, supports pilot projects in the area of education, training and youth.

In order to access funds from this programme, the co-op organisations have to propose good projects and - as assistance is channelled through governments - They have to establish good working relations with government offices and improve their lobbying activities.