Various institutions of the Union, with ever increasing frequency and emphasis, have devised policies and initiated mechanisms which are best represented by the concept of governance. The Union, while formulatinf common policy in limited areas, has accepted the principle of subsidiaity in many others, encouraging collaborative schemes and approaches among various actors, at the lowest possible administrative level. Major instruments for implementation like the Social Fund and Regional and Cohesion Fund envisage and encourage a new societal division of labour, new types of collaboration among a multiplicity of stakeholders and new forms of participation and accountability, true to the sprit of governance. All these developments and trends justify a course in which this concept and its various applications within the European Union are taken up systematically, with a view to derive policies for candidate countries during their process of harmonization.
