Abstract

The essay shows that the projects for administrative twinning envisaged by the pre-accession strategy for the candidate countries of Central-Eastern Europe are something more than and different from an instrument to adjust the administrative structures of those countries to the transposition and implementation of European Community legislation. They are principally a means to transfer technical-scientific knowledge from the member-countries to the candidate-countries. This is evinced by analysis of the administrative twinning project currently in progress between the Provincial Government of Turin and the Slovak Ministry of the Environment. Description of this twinning is followed by analysis of the role played therein by the Regional Agency for Environmental Protection of Piedmont, with particular regard to the section of the project dealing with the regulations on "genetically modified organisms". Further analysis highlights that organizational change in the administrative structures of the Slovak Ministry of the Environment and the local administrations engaged in implementing the EU regulations seems to be more an unintended effect of the project's implementation than one of its priority goals.