In profile: the Instrument for
Pre- Accession - IPA


What is IPA?

IPA funding helps the candidate countries and potential candidate countries to make political and economic reforms, preparing them for the rights and obligations that come with EU membership. 
The European Commission's Directorate General for Regional Policy is responsible for the implementation of both the IPA Regional Development Component (so-called Component III) and the Cross-Border Component II in the part concerning Member States and Interreg IPA programmes. For more complete information on IPA see this presentation on INFOREGIO. 
In this data story we profile the planned investment and its implementation by the ten Interreg IPA programmes during the 2014-2020 budget period.  

1. Planned Interreg IPA investments

The IPA programmes have their own specific high level thematic menu that guides the planned investments.
(This contrasts with the internal Interreg cross border programmes, which share the menu of high level thematic objectives with the programmes under the "Investment in Growth and Jobs" objective.) 

The total and EU financial allocations to each theme are presented in the chart below. 

2. Interreg IPA Investment progress (total cost: EU + National)

The IPA programmes report financial data to the Commission on their progress:
  1. Planned: Total budget of the programme
  2. Decided: Financial resources allocated to selected projects (project pipeline)
  3. Spent: Expenditure reported by the selected projects
The financial data reporting is expressed in total costs only (i.e. not broken down by the EU or national share).

3. Interreg IPA EU Payments

The cumulative EU payments made to the ten IPA programmes are shown in the two charts below. The data is cumulative to the end of each year (e.g. the 2015 values include 2014+2015 payments.)
The chart to the left below shows the cumulative Interreg IPA planned EU amount and the total EU payments made at the end of each year. The chart to the right below shows the 2021 cumulative position for each of the ten IPA programmes.  

More information

For a full description of the IPA components see this presentation on INFOREGIO.