IPA is the European Community’s financial instrument of the pre-accessionhelp for the period 2007-2013 providing a unique and rationalised framework. The value of this fund is 11,468 billion Euro and it replaces the programmes for the period 2000-2006, namely: CARDS, PHARE, SAPARD and ISPA, Phare Cross-Border Cooperation (CBC) and Coordination, pre-accession financial assistance for Turkey. The goal of the program is to prepare the candidate countries for full implementation of the acquis communautaire at the time of accession, while potential candidate countries are led to progressively align themselves on the Community acquis.
 
IPA is comprised of 5 components:

Croatia is participating in the program from 2007 until it becomes EU Member state. The Agency for Adult Education participates in the IV component of IPA (Human resources development) under the priority "Enhancing human capital and employability".

Under the mentioned priority, the Agency will implement the project "Regional network of local learning institutions" from the year 2010 to 2012.

This project aims to strengthen the capacity of institutions providing adult education by creating short programmes for the improvement of key and other competences of adultsas well as to promote lifelong learning. By exchanging these programmes a regional network will be established which will enable a better cooperation of key local partners (local institutions providing adult education, local offices of CES - Croatian Employment Service, regional offices for education, NGOs etc.). Another product of the network will be a higher quality and exchangeability of programmes and accesibility to end users. The aforementioned will serve as a foundation for the development of key competences of adults for the purpose of increasing their competitiveness on the labour market.