Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey to join IDA

IDA's (interchange of data between administrations) mission is to support the implementation of EU policies and activities by co-ordinating the establishment of Trans-European telematic networks between administrations.

In April 2003, Slovenia, Poland, Czech Republic, Malta, Estonia and Cyprus were the first among the candidate countries to sign Memoranda of understanding with the European Commission, formalising their participation in the IDA Programme. Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia are expected to sign a Memorandum of Understanding soon.

Increasing data exchange is expected to accelerate the candidate countries' take-up of EU legislation before they formally join the EU. The programme also aims at helping the future Member States integrate into the Union's internal market, create an enlarged area of freedom, security and justice and provide online government services to citizens and companies.

IDA's 25 million euro work programme for 2003 takes into account the needs of the candidate countries. The candidate countries will have to bear the costs of their participation in IDA. However, they will be able to use some PHARE and pre-accession funds for that purpose.

To date, most candidate countries were involved as observers in several IDA working groups of national experts, responsible for areas such as network security and e-Government portals. Also, information events have been held in several candidate countries, and other events are being organised to raise awareness of how the IDA Programme works and how candidates can take part.