Belgrade, 26 August 2014
The First Steering Committee meeting of the Regional Joint Programme funded by the European Union and Implemented by the Council of Europe “Promoting Human Rights and Minority Protection in South East Europe” was held in Belgrade, Serbia on 26th August 2014. The Steering Committee members praised the Project for its focus and expressed their opinion that it can provide “direct impact to the lives of citizens in the region”.
The meeting was opened by Mr Jean-Christophe Bas, Director of Directorate of Democratic Citizenship and Participation of the Council of Europe and Mr Luca Manunta, Programme Manager from Operations Social Inclusion of the EUD in Belgrade. You can read the speech by Mr Bas on the link here.
All 14 Steering Committee members representing local and central governments of seven beneficiaries attended the meeting. More importantly they all actively contributed and showed strong interest in the project. They promoted the Project and the Call for expression of interest for small grants on their Ministry websites and through professional channels.
Prior to the meeting, the representatives in the Steering Committee (SC) met with the Project secretariat and endorsed the Call for expression of interest of municipalities to apply for small grants scheme in the Project as well as the Criteria for selection of the municipalities.
During the meeting, the Steering Committee members endorsed the six monthly workplan prepared by the Project’s secretariat and provided input to the ways to reach to municipalities that have not benefited from the EU assistance to great extent so far. The SC members also discussed the ways to reach international institutions that will provide the baseline and an evaluation research for the project as well as the selection of the short term experts in the Project.
The secretariat of the Project will create strong coordination and synergies with the EU and relevant stakeholders in the field to avoid overlaps and also to act as a “tool to detect issues and elements of good practices in the field” and share with others.
The SC members agreed to organize the first Regional conference where representatives of all municipalities, part of the project, will have the opportunity to sign the Grant agreements as well as to network and learn more about the minority protection mechanisms and the Council of Europe instruments for minority protection (the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM) and the European Charter for regional or Minority Languages (ECRML). The Second meeting of the Steering Committee will be held in Podgorica, Montenegro at the end of February 2015.
