Brussels ( Brussels Morning ) – EU Commission’s TSI implements 170 projects, facilitating 307 reforms to bolster competitiveness, resilience, and modernization across Member States.
Today, the European Commission has set a new round of 170 projects under the Technical Support Instrument (TSI), to sustain Member States in designing and implementing a total of 307 reforms in 2024, which will maintain Member States’ competitiveness, resilience, and modernisation.
These reforms will protect a wide range of areas affecting citizens’ lives in the EU, ranging from the application of Artificial Intelligence in companies and public administrations, the enactment of the Green Deal Industrial Plan and other reforms instrumental to the shift to a net-zero economy, supporting gender equality and containing brain drain, and delivering mental health care services to young people and children.
Building on the reforms already executed under the TSI in its four-year history – amounting to approximately 780 projects for about 1,200 reforms – the new round of reforms will deliver tailor-made technical help to Member States, to allow them to design and enforce the reforms that they need, therefore delivering on national and EU priorities on the ground.
Strengthening the Administrative Ability of Member States’ Public Administrations
The reforms will persist to prioritise the modernisation of the Member States’ public administrations, in a string with the Commission’s Communication on Enhancing the European Administrative Space (ComPAct), assumed at the end of 2023. In 2024, the TSI will keep civil servant exchanges as part of the Public Administration Cooperation Initiative (PACE), an endeavour launched to promote peer-to-peer understanding among civil servants from different Member States. These exchanges will concern 200 civil servants from 12 Member States, to improve their skills in key dimensions such as sustainable finance, digitalisation of the administration, usefulness of EU Funds, and data literacy.
TSI Enables Member States to Deliver on Fundamental Political Priorities
The reforms endorsed by the TSI in 2024 will donate to the joint political priorities of the EU and Member States: 31% of the desired reforms will focus on the shift to a net-zero economy. These reforms will mostly relate to the Green Deal Industrial Plan, biodiversity, and green transport.
The TSI will also support national, regional, and local public administrations to integrate technologies and digital systems and to evolve more AI-savvy, with 27% of the selected reforms linked to the digital transition.
For example, the TSI will enable Member States to explore ways that AI can help to process data safely and virtually in the areas of social security, welfare, and employment, and how they can guarantee that public administrations advance gender equality while operating the features of AI. The TSI will also manage digital financial literacy, to help Member States and citizens adjust to the increasing use of digital tracks to complete complex financial transactions, such as savings, pensions, and investments.
Another fundamental strand of the 2024 TSI reforms is addressing and mitigating the effect of demographic change across several sectors such as health and welfare strategies, migration, and public policy and budgeting. Moreover, in 2024, children and youth will be at the command of 31 reforms in assignments across the Member States, with reforms concentrating on education, and the mental health and well-being of children and young people.
Strengthening Cooperation Among Countries and Regions
The Commission will persist in supporting Member States in managing common challenges together, in facilitating economic, social, and territorial disparities, and in supporting governance at all levels. TSI projects will facilitate peer-to-peer learning while delivering tailored support to national and regional contexts. In 2024, the TSI will sponsor 43 multi-country reform projects and 38 provincial reform projects.
Through the more general scope of TSI Flagship projects, the Commission will also handle common reform needs of Member States, from boosting skills development systems to improving the quality of public finances, for example. The TSI cycle for 2024 will support 13 flagship projects.
