Baltic States – CIS, EU – Baltic States, Financial Services, Legislation, Lithuania

It is the first project that Lithuania won independently, without the help of its partners. Lithuanian project proposal was formulated by the Office of the Government together with the European Social Fund Agency (ESFA), the Civil Service Department (CSD) and the Training Centre of the Ministry of Finance (TCMF), and received the highest scores, the press service of the Lithuanian Government reports.

The Chancellor of Lithuania's Government and the leader of the project as well as the Lithuanian delegation in Chisinau, Alminas Maciulis, said that Lithuania is a high-achiever in this area compared to other EU member states, and the reliability, experience and expertise of Lithuanian institutions is highly valued across Europe.

"Our success means great evaluation of our civil service system. It is very important that the wide-acclaimed EU experts gave us highest scores, thus recognizing our qualifications, our experience and capability to share it with others. I am certain that the cooperation with the Republic of Moldova will be effective and beneficial to all the participants," said Maciulis at the conference.

The project will enable the experts from the Office of the Government, the Civil Service Department and the Ministry of Finance Training Centre to pass on the modernisation experience to Moldova Civil Service, with the ESFA responsible for the administrative and financial management of the project. The project value is EUR 1.3 million.

As a donor, Lithuania has been involved in the EU Twinning since 2004 and has won 47 of the Twinning projects with a total value of EUR 39 million. The EU Twinning Project is one of EU instruments to help candidate countries and new member-states to integrate into the EU. These projects bring together institutions from different countries to help the newcomers to take over the experience from the old EU member-states.