Dutch Govt Allots EUR 8,5 M for Inter-Municipal Aid in Bulgaria, CEE

Bulgaria in EU | October 9, 2009, Friday // 11:58|  views

The Dutch Ambassador Karel van Kesteren addressed the participants in the closing seminar. Photo by the Embassy of the Netherlands in Sofia

The Dutch government has contributed EUR 8,5 M for developing service provision by municipalities in Central and Eastern Europe through fostering cooperation with towns in the Netherlands.

The funds have been provided between 2005 and 2009 through the MATRA program of the Dutch government within the projects Logo East I and II. The two projects have been implemented by the International Co-operation Agency of the Association of Netherlands Municipalities (VNG International).

The closing seminar for the Bulgarian part of the program took place at the first day of the Sixth Annual meeting of the National Association of Municipalities in Bulgaria in Sandanski.

Within the projects there have been trainings and seminars for municipal officials as well as concrete twinning and training projects.

For Bulgaria, under the LogoEast I project there were 6 twinning partnerships and under the current LogoEast II there were three: Doetinchem (Netherlands) – Pernik – Pardubice (Czech republic); Dordrecht (Netherlands) – Varna and Haaglanden (Netherlands) – Sandanski.

Other countries involved in the second phase of the project are Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Ukraine, Serbia and Montenegro and Russia.

The Dutch Ambassador Karel van Kesteren addressed the participants in the closing seminar pointing at some of the lessons learnt during the co-operation projects – the importance of local integrity systems, investment planning, involvement of the citizens and public-private partnerships.

We need your support so Novinite.com can keep delivering news and information about Bulgaria! Thank you!


Tags: MATRA program, Karel van Kesteren, Dutch, the Netherlands

Back  

» Related Articles:

Search

Search