7th May 2010

Every since the 9th of May 1985 we celebrate the day of Europe, 2010 marks a special date the 60 years anniversary of  the Schuman declaration. On that date most of the majors cities in Europe organize events to celebrate it.

The Local democracy Agency in cooperation with the City of Subotica has been co-organising it, for the past six years. The purpose of this event is to bring a closer view to the citizens via informing them on the different perspectives it can offer while becoming a member state.

This year the event was held on the 7th of May under the project »Local coalition for EU integration«, supported by Institute for sustainable communities and USAID. It was supported with promotional materials by the embassies of Austria, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Finland, Sweden, Danemark, Germany, Poland, Romania, and France as well as the two local consulates of Hungary and Croatia and the Delegation of the European Commission in Belgrade. During the day, the citizens were able to inform themselves through promotional brochures regarding the countries, and to check their knowledge on the European Union via a survey.  Furthermore the citizens could contribute to the ‘Tree of Europe’. Visitors wrote their opinion on Europe on piece of paper and added it as an extra leaf to the tree made at Trench festival by Local democracy agency volunteers, and took part in a survey regarding advocacy action on establishing Eu policy officer. To be closer to the future generations and to kids, LDA Subotica team had prepared quizzes and puzzles to learn about Europe through games.

The day of Europe was closed by a conference organised by Lda held in the open university regrouping the active Ngos in the youth sector in order to share their experiences on youth exchanges.

During the day it was organised two thematic conferences:

EU works for regional and cross-border co-operation programmes in Subotica, in the City of Subotica with the key note speakers: Mr.  Vincent Degert, Head of EU Delegation in Serbia,  Mr. Srdjan Majstorovic, Deputy Director of EU integration office of the government of Serbia and Mr. Sasha Vucinic, Mayor of Subotica.

Promoting EU values in local community – the role of NGO-s: initiated by LDA Subotica, the conference held at the Open university Subotica, gathering local NGO-s and their networking for EU project development.