The Role of National Administration in Managing and Programming of EU funds

The realization of the aid from the EU funds means achieving a social - development goal for beneficiary country. From general point of view this goal can be defined as accession RS to EU. Other individual goals at lower hierarchy are defining from this general goal and they are achieving in the long process of European integration using IPA funds. Activities to achieving this social development goal are organized by projects and require management in order to realize in the most efficient manner.

Managing of this social - development projects/getting aid from EU funds is doing through the concept of PCM - Project Cycle Management, which means broking down the main project on global phases and then managing these individual phases of project.

First, when talking about PCM, it is necessary to establish an adequate organizational structure. EC demands from beneficiary country to establish appropriate structures, improving the capacity of public administration and a clear definition of roles and responsibilities during the process of IPA, in order to efficiently use the pre-accession funds. The process of programming of international assistance is defined by this Action Plan and it is required the active participation of the following structures: Office of the Deputy Minister, Ministry of Finance / Department of Programming and Management of EU Funds and Development Assistance, Serbian European Integration Office, DACU, Competent ministries and special organizations, government services, the National Assembly and National Bank of Serbia, the Group for the evaluation of projects, other state institutions , local government, public enterprises, representatives of development partners / international donor community, the Project Group for programming IPA.

The Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration has been nominated the National IPA Coordinator, and the Sector for Planning, Programming, Monitoring and Reporting on EU Funds and Development Assistance of the European Integration Office has been nominated the Technical Secretariat of the NIPAC, which at the same time performs tasks of coordination of international development aid.

Within the IPA EU is transferring the methodology for the management of these projects to the beneficiary country. DIS - Decentralized Implementation System is a system where the Commission confers the management of certain activities (implementation of tender procedures, contracting, payment, and control of expenditure) to the beneficiary country, but EC maintains the overall final responsibility for the overall execution of the EU budget.

Realization of one project cycle aid is using to achieve certain objectives, with the realization of the other project cycle some other goals are achieving until the final, main goal - accession RS to EU. Principle of management activities which is organize through project cycle will continue to function even after Serbia accession into EU, it will be use for other funds (structural and cohesion funds of EU).

Speed of the motion of Serbia into EU as well as realization of EU funds depends on the efficiency of these projects and the whole project cycle.