"Golden Stars" for outstanding Town-twinning Projects

The town-twinning movement brings together municipalities throughout the Europe linking them in a dense network of citizens. Twinning provides the opportunity to find out more about the daily lives of citizens in other European countries, to talk to them and exchange experiences, and to develop joint projects on issues of common interest such as local integration, environment, economic development and culture.

The European Commission awards grants to the Twinning events which include educational programmes on topical European issues. Each year the European Commission awards the "Golden Stars of Town-twinning" to 10 outstanding projects that have contributed successfully to the European integration.

Ten outstanding town twinning initiatives involving 27 towns received the Golden Stars awards on 3 February 2005 in Brussels. Siauliai City in the category of "citizens' meetings" was one of the winners. The award ceremony took place in the Charlemagne building of the European Commission in the framework of a Consultation Forum on the future action programme to promote active European Citizenship.

The meeting among Siauliai and Czestochowa (Poland), Etten Leur (The Netherlands), Fredericia (Denmark), Jelgava (Latvia) has been selected to receive a Golden Star. The meeting was organised in a view of the European Year of Education through Sports 2004.

The project involved citizens active in sports and local representatives from the twinned towns. The event took place within the framework of the city festival "Siauliai Days" that brought together over 1800 people from nine countries. The programme included plenary debate on "Sports as a tool for social integration of young people", photo exhibition "Sports bridges people", several sports and cultural events and workshops for young participants. Local representatives discussed issues related to the European integration, youth exchanges and planning of the future cooperation at the local level between twinned towns. Particular attention was paid to the role of sports by the social inclusion of disadvantaged groups. The project resulted in a positive exchange of specialist views and ideas to be implemented in the coming years.

The European Commission also organised an exhibition representing several Town Twinning awarded projects.