Description

The project was part of the strategy of the EU to provide a plan for the associated Central and Eastern Europe countries (CEEC) to prepare them for accession. An essential element of this strategy wass their progressive preparation for their integration into the internal market of the EU, through a phased adoption of the Union's internal market acquits, as stated in the report from the Council to the Essen European Council (December 1994).

This specific Phare Multi-Country Project focused on the means to create a framework for an in-depth dialogue among CEECs and between CEEC and EU on the role energy strategies and international assistance programs can play to support countries to converge towards European Integration. In order to prepare the framework for a structured dialogue on energy policies, the following activities were carried out:

• Elaboration of an approach on data collection, where attention has been given to aspects such as completeness, consistency and comparability of data.
• Design of a methodology for monitoring convergence of energy policies, including the instruments for monitoring on a regular basis.
  •    Design of meaningful, clear and comparable indicators to review and monitor energy policies in all countries, to provide the backbone of the analysis of national energy policies in comparison with these of other European countries.

The set of convergence indicators formed the framework for identification of progress and gaps in the energy policy convergence process.

These activities converged into comparable country strategies for convergence of energy policies for each CEEC and recommendations for the Phare Energy Programme to assist and promote convergence of energy policies. For each country, these have been presented in a Country Document.