NATIONAL SEMINARS ON INTERREG III B

Interreg III B will be by far the greatest program for co-operation projects between local and regional authorities in terms of money. The European Union will probably publish the first call for projects after summer of 2001.

In spite of the importance and the large amounts of money involved, Interreg III B is generally not very well known, specially in the applicant countries. UBC therefore arranged a series of national meetings during the first months of 2001 in order to inform the member cities about Interreg III B. The first meeting was January in Tartu for the Estonian UBC member cities. It was followed by a meeting for the Polish cities in Gdansk, and finally meetings in Cesis, Latvia and Šiauliai,

Lithuania. It takes a rather long time to establish a project and partnership of good quality. Experience shows that if preparations start when the call for projects comes, it is usually too shorttime. When the call comes, the outline of the project, a preliminary partnership and a general idea of the activities in the project should be clear. The time after the call should be spent on the application form and all formalities at first hand.

Mr Juhan Janusson, UBC EU Coordinator, gave information on Interreg III B at the meetings. Both the program as such and specific project ideas were discussed. Hopefully they will result in many high quality project applications.