The Ministry of Agriculture of the Czech Republicand the Food and Agriculture organization (FAO) of the United Nations organized a workshop on the topic "Rural Development in EU-Accession Countries - Support Programmes and Capacity Building" from 23 to 26 February 2009. The workshop was sponsored by the Czech Republic and FAO, and implemented with the support of COMENIUS.

The workshop was part of the regional capacity building project (Support to capacity building for agriculture and rural development policy analysis and formulation to support EU-integration of the South-eastern European countries; TCP/RER/3101) FAO are implementing in cooperation with the SWG, who also had their first meeting in 2009 at this occasion.

The focus of the workshop was on sharing policy experience in rural development of EU New Member States with countries in SEE and Turkey related to EU accession. The overall objective of the workshop was to support the EU accession process of SEE countries and Turkey, in particular through technical assistance to formulation and alignment of national rural development policies with EU Common Agricultural Policy.

The immediate objectives of the workshop are to

facilitate the information exchange regarding rural development policies and share lessons learnt;
review multilateral and bilateral support programmes for EU-integration and formulate proposals for improvement and better coordination;
discuss further steps needed for institutional set-up and monitoring as prerequisites for utilizations of IPARD. The workshop was closed by a meeting of the institutional members of the SWG.

There were technical sessions with presentation by invited key-institutions and presentations by the country representatives. Keynote speakers were invited from the European Commission, World Bank and institutions dealing with rural development in accession countries. Selected case studies were introduced from new EU-member states with lessons learnt. Additionally rural development situation in the Accession Countries (Western Balkan Countries and Turkey) were also presented.

See pressentations and other documents of the workshop.