Albania planning EU aid

TIRANA, Aug 31 – The Albanian government held in late August a meeting of the Strategy Planning Committee under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Sali Berisha to discuss European Commission (EC) financing for Albania, under the Instrument of Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA) agreement for 2010.
The biggest priority for this fund will be the consolidation of institutions and infrastructure, as well as projects dealing with public security and public order sectors.
The program’s assistance under this agreement for Albania, for the three year period (2009-2011) is around 269.4 million Euros, whereas for 2010 it is Euro 93 million.
From this amount 82.7 million of Euros address the assistance for institutional consolidation and Euro 10.5 million go for cross-border cooperation.
Since May, ministries and agencies have presented their proposals and requests in compliance with the fields or criteria in which IPA funds will be allocated. In this respect, 20 million will go for political criteria, 16 million for economic criteria and about 41 million for other criteria
“Naturally, there can be improvements and a re-distribution of priorities, and as long as they have to be approved by September 1, I think we should analyze everything during this meeting,” said Berisha.