Twinning

Twinning is a means of institutional cooperation used by the EU whereby public administrations in EU countries share their expertise with their peers in partner or beneficiary countries’ public administrations. It takes the form of long-term, on-the-ground cooperation and is complemented by the TAIEX (Technical Assistance and Information Exchange) instrument which focuses on shorter-term activities such as study visits, expert missions or workshops.

Twinning is used as part of certain EU external aid programmes, notably the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA) and the European Neighbourhood Instrument (ENI). It is a form of institutional cooperation and capacity-building which is used to achieve specific concrete mandatory operational results agreed by the EU and partner and beneficiary countries.

Under IPA, which covers countries which are candidates and potential candidates for EU membership, Twinning is used to assist public administrations in these countries to incorporate EU legislation and standards (also known as the Union acquis) into their national laws, as well as to implement and enforce these new laws. Twinning aims to share the good practice developed in the EU, to contribute to Public Administration Reform (PAR) and to foster long-term working relationships between public administrations in existing and future EU countries.

Twinning is also available in Eastern and Southern Neighbourhood partner countries. In this case, Twinning is used as a means of upgrading capacity in public administrations:

by staff training,
by providing support for structural reorganisation,
by supporting partner countries‘ sector reforms in the public administration, and
by supporting legal approximation with the EU.