Review article
INSTITUTIONAL REGULATION AND THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ABSORBING EU FUNDS: THE EXPERIENCES OF IRELAND, ESTONIA AND SLOVENIA
Tanja MARKOVIČ HRIBERNIK
; Faculty of Economics and Business, Maribor
Monika KIRBIŠ
; Government Office for Local Self-Government
Uroš VEK
; Faculty of Economics and Business, Maribor
Abstract
The enlargement of the EU by ten new member states in 2004
increased the importance of the EU cohesion policy; however, the
readiness of these states to absorb the funds has not been adequate.
Consequently, their absorption capacity has been relatively
low. An analysis was made which states the importance of institutional
settings for the efficiency of absorbing funds. With this
purpose in mind, we first closely examined the most successful
countries in absorbing EU funds. These were: Ireland as the
leading country among the EU-15 and Estonia and Slovenia as
the leading countries among the EU-10. Ireland has a decentralized
managing system with several managing authorities and
paying authorities, also on the regional level, while Estonia and
Slovenia have a more centralized system on a national level.
Regarding the current implementation system and absorption
success in these three countries, we cannot determine which of
the three presented implementation structures is more effective
and advisable for improving the absorption of EU funds. We
came to the conclusion that even different implementation
structures can lead to high absorption results.
Keywords
administration systems of EU funds; Structural Funds; Cohesion Fund; absorption efficiency; transitional countries
Hrčak ID:
31157
URI
Publication date:
31.12.2008.
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