As an EU agency one of the ETF’s primary functions is to provide support to European institutions and, more specifically, Commission services in the development and implementation of relevant EU external policies and programmes in the field of human resources development.
The ETF's role of providing assistance to EC services in 2008 is framed by developments in EU external relations policies and instruments on one hand and developments on VET and employment policies in the countries on the other. In operational terms, the ETF’s role will be structured by its changing contribution to the EU programme project cycle and in particular by a shift towards (i) preparation of sector interventions by building country stakeholder capacities and providing relevant policy analysis, (ii) supporting EU policy development and monitoring with relevant inputs and, last but not least, (iii) providing a guarantee for reform continuity through our capacity to bridge EU assistance and take stock of EU project contributions to overall reform strategies.
These new roles will above all lead to an intensification of policy advice to and cooperation in policy analysis with stakeholders in the partner countries as well as a better understanding of information needs from EC services. This will require both robust team work at the ETF to provide the wide range of skills demanded by sector approaches as well as new and diversified forms of cooperation with EC services, including the external relations “family” but also other sectoral DGs, and intensified exchange of information with international donors.
In addition to the support for the preparation of new interventions under the ENPI, the ETF will also provide intelligence on cross-cutting issues that are becoming of key importance in the context of the ENP. This is in particular the case of migration where the ETF can provide a new angle of looking at migration from the human resources development point of view. Similarly we would also like to foster issues linked to gender and employment that are high on the agenda, particularly of the EuroMed Partnership. Intelligence building and Information provision at policy level could also include input to the monitoring of the ENP action plans and/or to the development of the remaining country and action plans. For operational reasons, relevant projects on migration, employment reviews, gender and competitiveness have been opened separately under the work programme 2008 but they should also be seen as providing relevant intelligence and input to EC services.
Building on the lessons learnt from the past, the main key feature of the Facility to support EC project is to keep a high degree of flexibility that would allow to accommodate new requests, and adapt on-going requests. It requires, therefore, a very dynamic management of resources. In highly volatile and unstable regions like the ones covered by the ENPI, this is particularly important. Also learning from the past the links to EC Delegations, AidCo services and ENP and EuroMed units in Relex need to be very closely developed.
In terms of beneficiary countries, the facility is by definition dependent on EC demand and is, therefore, open to any partner country. In case of conflicting requests and/or limited availability of human and financial resources, the ETF will need to make a critical analysis in terms of the added value of the request for the implementation of the ETF’s Mid Term Perspective and in terms of the level of priority given to the partner country in question. Requests regarding high priority countries will have preference over low or middle priority countries. In line with the ETF's mid-term perspective, requests related to policy advice will have preference over operational requests.
The activities section below provides detailed information on the services to be provided according to the demands received by the end of 2007.