Last week the OECD hosted a meeting of the Development Assistance Committee - the main point of the discussion was Hungary's accession to the DAC. Hungary expressed the interest to join this forum only in February this year, and consequently they proceeded to the formal ratification in May 2016. The secretariat of the OECD DAC payed a visit to Hungary in October 2016 in order to assess whether the country is ready to meet the criteria for joining the DAC. The final report then clearly stated that Hungary has met all the necessary criteria.

The member states of the DAC supported its accession and simultaneously made their requests for the monitoring and evaluation systems. According to the Deputy Minister of Trade Péter Szijjártólz, functional monitoring and evaluation systems will be launched in the near future.

It was the Czech Republic that suggested Hungary to become the next new member state. Hungary has joined the DAC exactly 20 years after joining the OECD. The Czech Republic has also supported Hungarian colleagues in their efforts to build a functional development cooperation system and they shared their good practice with them.

"I am glad that we could share our good practice with our Hungarian colleagues. Hungary's accession to the DAC is also important for the cooperation within the Visegrad Group (V4). Since 2013 Hungary was the last country from V4 that has not joined the DAC. But the V4 countries have the same interests in the Balkans and in the Eastern Europe which opens a shared path to projects that we could run together," says the director of CzechAID Michal Kaplan.

You can read more about the DAC OECD http://www.oecd.org/dac/