A Bridge Too Phare? EU Pre-Accession Aid and Capacity-Building in the Candidate Countries

The imminent large‐scale EU enlargement raises important questions regarding the success of Phare as one of the Pre‐Accession Funds in preparing candidate countries' institutions for Structural Funding, the need to reform EU regional policy itself, and to what extent the Commission is using Phare to build regional‐level institutions and shift an enlarged EU towards multi‐level governance. Despite some successes, Phare will not be able to deliver everything it was set up for, and a coherent set of post‐accession transition policies will need to be set up as part of the next reform of the Structural Funds to ensure that the process of learning and adjustment leading to the adoption of the acquis does not stall with the new membership.