The project will enhance regional environmental cooperation in the Western Balkans and Turkey for EU accession. The project covers 8 beneficiary countries which are Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Kosovo1 and Turkey. Due to the cross border character of many environmental problems, the involvement of other EU countries, and most prominently EU countries that border the beneficiary countries, will also be promoted.
The overall project objective is to enhance regional cooperation in the Western Balkans and Turkey in the field of environment in the prospect of accession to the European Union and the purpose is to assist the European Commission in providing the Secretariat of the Regional Environmental Network for Accession (RENA).
The project centers around four components:
- Component 1: Strategic Planning & Investments” (incl. Progress Monitoring & Compliance Check)
The overall goal is to increase the beneficiary countries’ quality with regard to transposition of EU environmental legal requirements, to improve institutional structures that are better equipped to implement and enforce transposed EU law, and to contribute to achieve better prepared, implemented and monitored environmental infrastructure projects.
- Component 2: Climate Change
The goal is to enable the beneficiary countries to continue to set up structures, strategies and actions to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
- Component 3: Cross-Border Cooperation & Multilateral environmental agreements
The overall goal is to achieve improvement in the transposition and implementation of the environmental acquis in the fields of nature protection, water protection, environmental impact assessment and strategic environmental assessment. Furthermore the ratification and implementation of multilateral environmental agreements and cross border cooperation shall be enhanced.
- Component 4: Environmental Compliance and Enforcement Network for Accession (ECENA)
The overall goal of this component is to bring institutional structures in different beneficiary country closer together, both in an organisational, methodological and professional sense.