A peer-to-peer support mission is not a consultancy work, where a Competent Authority sub-contracts a task to an external body, and waits for the outputs – a P2P is based on exchanges and social learning, where voluntary practitioners are working hand-in-hand with received colleagues. As a consequence peer-to-peer exchange mission is used more commonly by the secretariat.
It is a voluntary exercise: both the bodies proposing to the subject related to RBMP and FRMP to be targeted by the exchange mission and the experts participating are experiencing that on a voluntary basis.
It is a peer-to-peer mechanism, meaning there is no intervention from the Commission or any other actor on the scope or the conclusions of the peer-to-peer exchange. The responsibility of the conclusions lies on the experts that have made them and the responsibility on their implementation on the authorities which were subject to the exchange mission.
The scale of work is usually the RBD, although it can be adjusted to a specific sub-basin if needed, or expanded to the whole country in countries where the implementation across the RBDs is very homogeneous.
The scope of the mission will be defined by the RBD/MS which voluntarily participates in the exchange by means of a Terms of Reference document. This could cover broadly the whole WFD and FD implementation process, but the review is likely to be more effective if it is targeted to specific issues. The subject can be of technical nature (e.g. setting effective monitoring programmes), deal with governance aspects (e.g. mechanisms to interact with stakeholders) or cover issues related to specific sectors (e.g. implementation of agriculture measures, economic analysis, etc).
The experts performing the review will generally be employees of bodies directly involved in RBMP and FRMP. They will not be paid for their work but only for travel, subsistence and accommodation expenses.
The preferred language of the peer-to-peer exchange process will be English. If necessary, arrangements to use other languages will be limited to few main documents and interpretation at main meetings.
The average estimated work load for a peer-to-peer mission of an RBD is around 10 working days per expert, including a visit to the receiving RBD. Depending on the scope of the mission, the process will involve between 2 and 5 experts.
The outcome of the peer-to-peer exchange mission will be a short report by the experts in which they include specific recommendations as a conclusion of the process.
It will be up to the RBD or Member State receiving to decide whether it makes available to the public the Terms of Reference of the peer-to-peer exchange mission and/or its conclusions and recommendations (partly or in full).
The timing of a particular exchange mission will be established by the RBD or Member State which is receiving, and subject to budgetary and organisational capacities of the Secretariat.
Other complementary actions such as targeted hands-on practical webinars or workshops spreading best practices on specific issues of WFD and FD implementation may also be organised by the secretariat, at the request of several RBDs or Member States, using the network of experts and RBDs/Member States established through the peer-to-peer mecanism or jointly with other processes (e.g. Environmental Implementation Review TAIEX - EIR TAIEX peer to peer).
