EU enlargement policy—civil engineering opportunities in central and eastern Europe

Ten central and eastern European countries have applied to join the European Union. To help them bring their regulatory and institutional frameworks into line with western European standards and to help major infrastructure projects get off the ground, the EU has set up a variety of substantial aid programmes. The main programmes of interest to civil engineers are Phare and ISPA, which currently have a combined annual spend of € 2·5 billion. This paper describes the background to these two programmes and explains how the funds are allocated.