BETWEEN DO'S AND DON'TS IN THE CATCHING-UP PROCESS - LESSONS FOR ROMANIA FROM THE EU-15 COHESION COUNTRIES

This papers aims to examine the experience of the four "Cohesion Countries" of the EU-15 Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Greece and to identify their, best practices as well,as a series of drawbacks in the implementation of the EU structural assistance. The resulted conclusions can be taken as useful lessons for the EU's New Member States with regard to their efforts to absorb the EU funds and to reduce the discrepancies between their development level at national and regional, scale and the EU average (the so-called "catching-up" process). A special emphasis will be put on the case of Romania, considering the authors' research results in this field and their recent calculations focused on the absorption of the pre-accession funds, especially the Phare assistance. Their findings will be the source of several considerations and proposals for increasing Romania's absorption rapacity in the 2007-2013 programming period.