On 22 March 2000 the CCP held a half-day Forum Session intended to explore the challenges and possibilities associated with international co-operation. Using the experience of the United States and Canada as a practical example, the session provided an overview of ongoing efforts to combat the...

Countries that are candidates for European Union (EU) accession face the complex and urgent task of building administrative institutions so that they can fulfil the “Copenhagen criteria”. Such institutions must be able to implement the acquis communautaire within tight budget constraints and...

Central and eastern European countries have been and still are adapting their legal framework to the requirements of a Western market economy and the body of EU legislation, the acquis communautaire. As the harmonisation of the national legal framework to EU standards is one of the yardsticks...

The aim of this paper is to explore the most problematic aspects of information access legal regimes and to provide some guidelines to policy makers, including legislators, governments and public administrators. The analysis is based on the comparison of Freedom of Information Acts (FOIAs) and...

Compliance with the European Union’s budgetary, financial control and audit requirements is one of the basic obligations of EU membership. SIGMA examines this in two publications that chronicle the experiences of seven EU Member States, including its three newest adherents, in integrating EU...

This publication contains an overview of the seminar, background papers — including an inventory of how candidate countries plan to manage European integration — as well as ten points which emerged during the panel discussions of senior negotiators. Chapters have been grouped around the...

This study provides an analysis of the functions, structures and capacity of the central public procurement bodies of Member States. Twenty-two separate overviews of public procurement systems in the 22 participating Member States were produced on the basis of national responses to a detailed...

Over the past decade, the European Commission, as the institution responsible for implementing the Community Budget, has taken an increasingly active interest in the effectiveness of the control measures applied by Member States to Community funds. Indeed, it is in the common interest of the...