The European Institute of Romania (EIR) is a public institution whose mission is to provide expertise in the field of European Affairs to the public administration, the business community, the social partners and the civil society.
Studies, training, translation and communication are EIR’s key areas:
- conducting studies and policies and strategy analyses to support Romania’s development within the European Union, and exercising its attributes as a Member State;
- organizing training activities in the domain of European Affairs;
- coordinating the translation and the linguistic and legal revision of the pre-accession acquis, of the ECHR case-law, of Romanian documents of legal nature, and setting up a consistent terminology;
- stimulating public debates on European issues.
The European Institute of Romania (EIR) started its activity in January 2000 as an organization established with the purpose to provide support to the decision-makers during Romania’s EU accession negotiation process. From the moment of its establishment, the Institute aimed at becoming an influential forum, involved in the process of raising the awareness of the Romanian society, in particular the political environment and the academia, regarding the main evolutions in the extremely complex and dynamic framework of the European Union.
After 1 January 2007, following Romania’s accession to the EU, the EIR shifted its strategic focus on the new priorities arising from Romania’s EU membership. These priorities refer mainly to the role, positions and possible alliances Romania might assume on the European scene, emphasizing the need for a deep examination at national level of the evolutions of the EU institutional framework and of the community policy-making framework.
Nowadays, the EIR functions as a public institution under the coordination of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The projects coordinated by EIR are focused on strengthening institutional capacity, and on developing specific expertise in the field of European affairs. The views presented by EIR are independent from the orientations of any public or private bodies and from the visions promoted by the political parties, interest groups or ideological movements.
EIR started out as a PHARE project and fully benefited from the financial and technical support of the program in the first three years of activity. The PHARE assistance was gradually reduces over the next two years, and from 2006 EIR’s specific activities were financed from the state budget. Under the current legal framework, the financing of EIR’s operating and capital expenditure is covered from public budget allocations and own revenue. The Institute’s team is currently made up of approximately 36 employees: researchers, experts in training and communication, translators, administrative personnel.
The activity of EIR is focused on four European affairs key domains: communication, studies, training and translations, as follows:
i) Communication: more than 200 conferences, round tables, debates and seminars organized with a view to stimulate at the national level an in-depth public debate on European issues; approximately 3000 specialized publications accessible to the public through EIR’s Documentation Centre and on EIR’s website (free access); on short and medium term in the communication activity in European affairs aims at developing partnerships with representative Community institutions in Romania, embassies of EU Member States and strengthening existing partnerships with institutions in Europe;
ii) Elaborating strategy and policy studies and analyses, with a view to provide support for the Romanian public administration and larger groups of stakeholders – 47 pre-accession impact studies (PAIS) conducted with the purpose to formulate policy recommendations for the decision-makers involved in the negotiation process; 50 strategy and policy studies (SPOS) focused on some of the most relevant fields of activity meant to enhance Romania’s development and growth; 34 Working Papers; 61 issues of the Romanian Journal of European Affairs, the first review in Romania focused on European affairs;
iii) Organizing training activities to increase the level of knowledge and skills of the civil servants and of other socio-professional categories;
iV) Translating of EHRC case-laws and Romanian legislation; and contributing to the development of the European spirit and values through communication events. EIR is member of the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI) and of the European Policy Institutes Network (EPIN), affiliated to the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) – Brussels, being also one of the five EPIN Steering Committee members.
Place of research, meetings, debates, reflection, translation of EHRC case-laws and Romanian legislation.
