Outlining the state of play following the recent meeting of the IPA Monitoring Committee, EUD/EUSR spokesperson Andy McGuffie said:
“As previously announced, the European Commission had to cancel the two agriculture projects previously suspended, totalling 5 million euro, due to the failure of the authorities in BiH to agree on the domestic structures to deliver EU agriculture and rural development assistance funds (IPARD).
“The lack of an agreement on the implementation of these two agricultural projects does not only mean a loss of more than 5 million Euro of the two cancelled projects but will also prevent the timely set-up of structures to channel significant future EU funds to BiH rural areas. The cancellation of these projects also underlines the urgency to set up a functional coordination mechanism to ensure that the country and its population are able to receive EU pre-accession funds in the future.
“Furthermore, the IPA Monitoring Committee gave BiH time until 1 October 2013 to come to an agreement regarding 5 other projects with a total value of 9 million euro.
“These are two projects supporting SMEs and tourism (4.5 million EUR) which are already suspended since 26 July, two planned projects to foster social inclusion (3 million EUR) and one on-going project strengthening the National Planning Process in BiH (1.5 million EUR).”
