| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Absorption (absorptive) capacity | This usually means the ability of a country or organization to receive aid and use it effectively. Developing countries often lack this capacity. For example, a country may receive enough money to enable all its children to attend primary school - but owing to a lack of teachers, lack of schools or a poor administrative system, it is impossible to spend this money in the short term. Work must first be done to train teachers, build schools and improve the efficiency of the system - thus raising the country's 'absorption capacity'. |
| Acceding - country | This is a candidate country that has met the Copenhagen criteria and has completed negotiations for joining the European Union. |
| Acquis communautaire | This is a French term meaning, essentially, "the EU as it is" – in other words, the rights and obligations that EU countries share. The "acquis" includes all the EU's treaties and laws, declarations and resolutions, international agreements on EU affairs and the judgments given by the Court of Justice. It also includes action that EU governments take together in the area of "justice and home affairs" and on the Common Foreign and Security Policy. "Accepting the acquis" therefore means taking the EU as you find it. Candidate countries have to accept the "acquis" before they can join the EU, and make EU law part of their own national legislation. |
| Agenda | This term literally means "things to be done". It normally refers to the list of items for discussion at a meeting, but politicians also use it as a jargon term meaning "things we want to achieve". For example, the EU's "Social Agenda" sets out what the Union wants to achieve, over the next few years, in terms of employment and social policies. It forms part of the "Lisbon Strategy" |
| Anti-trust | The EU aims to guarantee fair and free competition in the single market, and to ensure that companies compete rather than collude. So EU rules prohibit agreements that restrict competition (e.g. secret agreements between companies to charge artificially high prices) and abuses by firms who hold a dominant position on the market. Rules of this kind are known as "anti-trust" legislation. The Commission has considerable powers to prohibit anti-competitive activities, and to impose fines on firms found guilty of anti-competitive conduct. |
| Applicant country | This means a country that has applied to join the European Union. Once its application has been officially accepted, it becomes a candidate country |
| Benchmarking | This means measuring how well one country, business, industry, etc. is performing compared to other countries, businesses, industries, and so on. The 'benchmark' is the standard by which performance will be judged. |
| Best practice | One way of improving policies in the EU is for governments to look at what is going on in other EU countries and to see what works best. They can then adopt this 'best practice', adapting it to their own national and local circumstances. |
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