Norwegian Financial Instrument
In compliance with the Enlargement Agreement of the European Economic Area (EEA) the EEA financial instrument and the bilateral financial instrument of the Norwegian government are accessible to several EU Member States, and Latvia among them.
The objective of both instruments is to eliminate social and economic disparities in the EEA and support the efforts of the new EU Member States to fully participate in the internal market of the enlarged Europe. Both financial instruments are in force from 1 May 2004 to 30 April 2009. The EEA financial instrument comprises the payments of Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, the Norwegian financial instrument is financed by Norway. Latvia is implementing several programmes and block grants of the above financial instruments.
On 21 November 2007, the Ministry of Finance and the Foreign Ministry of Norway signed an agreement on implementing the block grant of the bilateral financial instrument of the Norwegian government "Short Term Expert Fund", entrusting its administration and the responsibility for its implementation to the SRDA.
The SRDA ensures the implementation of the block grant "Short Term Expert Fund", including admission of the sub-project applications, the administrative evaluation of the sub-project applications, the functioning of the Secretariat of the Interinstitutional Evaluation Commission, contract conclusion, the monitoring of the subproject implementation and performing the payment operations.
