Brussels, 3 February 2020
Željana Zovko and the other members of the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs had a structured dialogue today on the allocation of the IPA II Performance reward to North Macedonia and Albania. This reward is granted to candidate and potential candidate countries that achieved outstanding reforms on their path towards European integration.
Commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Policy, Oliver Varhelyi attended the meeting and outlined the reasoning of the Commission behind the proposal to reward North Macedonia and Albania. After the meeting behind closed doors, Željana Zovko, as EPP vice-coordinator for foreign affairs and as member of the Working group on external financial instruments, expressed her support for the allocation of the reward and said it would recognise the exceptional progress in EU-related reforms and the effective use of EU funding.
Zovko, who is also corapporteur for the interinstitutional negotiations on the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA III), also focused on the question of the effectiveness of the current IPA legislation. She said that she is looking closely in the future programming framework with a strong involvement of the European Parliament. This will lead to the improvement of institution building in the beneficiary countries and will ensure a sustainable society and peace and stability.