Two Local Democracy Agencies in Osijek and Subotica, in cooperation with 4 partner organizations (Open University Subotica, Association of Local Democracy Agencies, Croatian Institute for Local Government and the Evangelical Theological Seminary) are implementing a cross border project with the aim to support, improve and build capacities for enabling town twinning, networking of local authorities and smaller settlements from the areas of Osijek-Baranja County, Vukovar-Srijem County and the Counties of Bačka and Srem, by founding two operational Resource Centres.

Project activities divided into four components:

Project management and visibility: meetings of the project team, publications, evaluation, visibility, reporting;
Capacity building: seminars for the local authorities and the representatives of the civil sector on the topic of European policies and the process of EU integration, training on preparing joint EU projects of town twinning;
Resource centre for networking: equipping, opening and functioning of the Resource Centres in Osijek and Subotica;
Networking of local authorities in the cross-border region of Serbia and Croatia: promotional workshops in the Resource Centre, non formal meetings of Coffee House in rural settlements.

This project’s expected result is to train the cross-border region to take action and responsibility in the cooperation development, which will be a key factor in the future process of European integration. For a successful cross-border cooperation the improvement of potential management is very important as well as the coordination of existing human and other capacities available for the implementation of IPA projects and the establishment of twin city connections, as the promotion of networking as important tool for the fostering of active citizenship and development of common European identity.

Having in mind the lack of information exchange and cooperation in the cross-border region the issues of networking for better possibilities for economic development and strengthening relations between Croatian and Serbian local authorities will be discussed.

The project will start in September 2012 and during its 18 month of implementation there will be several exchanges, trainings, seminars, conferences and promotional workshops as well as non formal meetings from about twenty municipalities from both sides of the border will be organized.

The project is financed by the European Union, through the Cross-border Cooperation Programme Croatia-Serbia.

More information about the project: http://www.lda-subotica.org/eng/activities/snet-eu.html