Policy Brief: Impact Assesment of EU Financial Assistance in Serbia

This paper argues for the necessity of a comprehensive impact assessment of EU financial assistance to Serbia to-date, with the parallel goal of designing better instruments for measuring impact, and thereby contributing to improved policy design for the country’s socio-economic development and future EU accession. The paper explores the scale of EU assistance in Serbia, giving an overview of the history of EU development cooperation over the time period 2000-2012, before going on to provide an analysis of the tools currently used for assessing impacts of the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA). The paper ends with conclusions and policy recommendations for including impact assessment as an integral element of all EU-assisted operations.