Dear Friends,

The Union of the Baltic Cities was one of the founding networks of the Conference of European Cross-border and interregional City Networks (CECICN) in 2010. The objective of this new organisation is to boost territorial cooperation among border cities in Europe and to reinforce the message concerning the importance of territorial cooperation. CECICN is comprised of six cooperating networks that represent more than 500 cities in border regions and 37% of European population.

Europe is at a crucial moment for future territorial cooperation. In a context of crisis Europe is now working on the budget for the next seven years (2014-2020) and new regulations on Cohesion Policy. Therefore, it is of major importance to reinforce what the benefits of cooperation are, what opportunities it represents and how, through cooperation,

Based on this CECICN is organizing the                                                       

1^st Congress on Smart Cooperation

June 25^th and 26^th 2012 in A Coruna (Spain)                                          

The Congress will be a European event where all European Institutions and CECICN networks will be strongly represented. As co-organisers of this European top level congress the UBC is asked to organise a workshop during the conference. The main goal of the workshops is to present the best practices of our UBC member cities. They will take place during the afternoon session of Monday 25^th June. UBC has been asked to coordinate the workshop 4 “Cooperation contributing to smart growth”.

I would be most happy, if you could contribute to this exceptional chance by sending an expert from your city to present best practises in interregional cooperation at the workshop. There is no conference fee but the city sending an expert is requested to cover his/her travel and accommodation costs. Number of speakers is limited so applications will be treated on the basis “first come – first served”. 

Please let me know by sending a mail to info@ubc.net by 27 February, 2012, if you are ready to represent the UBC in A Coruna. For details, please see the attached documents.

• Letter from the UBC President (57 KB)
• Program (338.17 KB)
• Workshop guidelines (158.5 KB)
• CECICN/AEBR strategic paper (1.13 MB)
• Workshop 4 “Cooperation contributing to smart growth” (37.94 KB)

Yours sincerely 

Per Bødker Andersen

President of UBC