The European Commission's management of pre-accession assistance to Turkey : Special report No 16, 2009

In this report the Court analyses the Commission's management of pre-accession financial assistance to Turkey. Particularly the first pre-accession assistance period (2002-06) suffered from many weaknesses common to pre-accession programmes. The Commission had not set sufficiently specific objectives for its funding to allow assessment of the project outcomes and did not have sufficient information to demonstrate the effectiveness of its pre-accession assistance. However, the projects visited did deliver their intended outputs and the results of the projects are likely to be sustainable. While the Commission has already made some significant improvements, the Court makes several recommendations for further corrective measures. The most critical areas for improvement are the setting of strategic objectives for the financial assistance, the development of more realistic timescales for the objectives and the monitoring of actual project performance and results based on clear objectives and appropriate indicators