Brussels - The European Union is set to offer Libya 60 million euros (81.4 million dollars) over the next three years to help reforms and improve diplomatic ties, despite recent frictions between Tripoli and Europe, officials in Brussels said Tuesday.

The move comes as part of an EU push to strengthen the bloc's relationship with its many neighbours, stretching in an arc from Belarus to Morocco, by boosting by a quarter the amount of partnership funding it offers.

"We want to engage further in cooperation with our neighbours ... Increased EU funding is an important tool to achieve these goals," the EU's foreign-policy director, Catherine Ashton, said in a statement.

While the EU's total payments to its neighbours are set to top 2 billion euros a year by 2013, "it would cost us even more to deal with the consequences of poor economic performance, instability and conflicts in our own neighbourhood," the EU's commissioner for enlargement and neighbourhood issues, Stefan Fule, said.

Libya is currently embroiled in a bitter row with Switzerland over measures undertaken by the Swiss against Libyan citizens.

The row has spilled over to the EU because Switzerland, which is not an EU member, belongs to the Schengen border-free zone, and has imposed a Schengen-wide ban on almost 200 Libyan officials.

Nonetheless, the commission, the EU's executive, has for the first time set up a specific programme for cooperation with Libya, aimed at giving it 60 million euros' worth in funding in return for reforms in areas such as economic governance.

While politically significant, the sum is minor compared with some of the new funding expected to accompany similar programmes for other countries close to Europe between 2011 and 2013. Morocco, the biggest recipient, is set to receive 580.5 million euros, Ukraine 470.1 million and Egypt 449.3 million.

Moldova stands to gain 273.1 million euros, more than its former-Soviet peers Armenia (157.3 million), Azerbaijan (122.5 million) and Georgia (180.3 million).

Jordan is in line to receive 223 million euros, Lebanon 150 million, Syria 129 million and Israel just 6 million.

In all, EU neighbourhood spending is expected to reach 2 billion euros a year by 2013, compared with 1.6 billion this year. (DPA)