Friday, 4th December 2009

City Hall, Apatin

On behalf of local government, Ms. Snezana Milesevic, Head of the Local Economic Development Office, greeted the participants (all together some 40 participants, representatives of local institutions and NGO-s) and emphasized the willingness of municipal leadership to improve their overall capacities in preparing projects within different EU funding opportunities. Experience in Apatin are particularly scarce and sporadic, while there are increasing number calls for proposals intended for local governments especially in border area with Hungary and Croatia. Considering the forthcoming adoption of the municipal Strategy of local sustainable development, it is necessary to have more knowledge and to establish more effective team approaches in order to prepare successful projects in different areas.

Ms. Olga Perusic, Project team member, presented the project in brief and its objectives with specific mention on the project’s main objective to build up administrative capacity for more successful utilization of EU funding opportunities.

Ms. Snežana Đorđević, expert conducted the training sessions. In introductory part, she paid much attention on a comparative perspective of the functioning of local administrations in Europe, on the history of the integration of local authorities within the EC-EU context and on the perspective for the future. Particular emphasis was on the current situation of local government system and still strongly centralized fiscal policy that sometimes poses a huge impediment for autonomous exerting of the main functions and competencies of local authorities in Serbia.

Especially motivated participants were the representatives of Local Economic Development office who spoke about some major constraints in establishing effective local coalitions and partnerships, such as the lack well established CSO-s and their networks. Also, despite the convenient geographic position in proximity of the Danube area, potential cross-border co-operation with Kopacki rit area in Croatia, development projects are scarce. Lack of adequate local capacities and legislative constraints are among the main reasons for insufficient utilization of this potential.

Furthermore, representatives of local NGO-s expressed their concern because of a slow process of establishing cross-sectoral partnerships in different areas of their engagement. Lack of communication with local CSO-s was also mentioned as one of the issues to be tackled in the long run. Examples of already initiated partnership agreement proposal were presented by the representative of several NGO- but this document has not been adopted since couple of years ago.

During the concluding and evaluation session, a number of representatives of both NGO-s and local government expressed willingness to continue with activities throughout the implementation of project activities planned. They also had positive attitude toward potential co-operation among the municipalities included in this action.