Building Capacity -- the Efficiency of Twinning Projects in Southeastern Europe

The European Union’s (EU) candidate states are expected to comply with an expanding list of laws, resolutions, treaties, and norms in order to gain entrance to the community. Unfortunately, many of the candidate states from Southeastern Europe lack the institutional framework to deal effectively with the complex structural and procedural reforms required of them. For the past decade the EU has relied on its twinning initiative to help the candidate states overcome these obstacles and develop the administrative structures, management skills, and procedural logics necessary to tackle the acquis communautaire. Twinning projects are framed by an ethos of partnership and the co-production of ‘mandatory results’ meant to facilitate the exchange of norms and ‘best practices’ between member states and the candidates. Yet, residual institutional problems and political unrest in the EU’s newest members beg the following questions: (1) Are twinning programs sufficiently designed to meet the unique demands of the EU’s Southeastern candidates? and (2) How enduring are the reforms initiated by twinning programs in this region? With these questions in mind, this paper assesses the efficiency of environmental twinning projects in Serbia and Croatia by analyzing their stated goals, connection to specific acquis chapters, procedural logic, and their history of goal attainment. This research will reveal the inefficiencies of the twinning initiative and will conclude by offering recommendations for improvement in future applications.