Thirty six women and men representatives from twenty-nine municipalities in South East and South West Serbia took part in the two-day inception workshop “Good governance at local level” held in Kopaonik on 11-12th December 2014. Organisation of the workshop was financially supported by the European Union and Governments of Switzerland and Serbia through European PROGRES Programme.
The inception workshop gathered municipal representatives appointed for cooperation with the Programme in the field of good governance for the purpose of further acquainting with the good governance concept and principle, in addition to presenting the so far good practice examples in the municipalities that had already initiated the good governance reform and exchange of experience and knowledge in this area.
The inception workshop simultaneously marked the beginning of the process of establishing municipal expert teams that will closely cooperate with the Programme and tackle this topic in their respective municipalities.
“The European PROGRES Programme endeavours to enable the good governance principle to become a common practice in everyday work and operation of the local self-government thus contributing to the enhancement of both economic and social development of communities. Although this is a long-term process, we believe that the municipalities will demonstrate a will and interest in partaking in this process, whereby the Programme’s wholehearted support will be offered to them along the way” stated Ana Nedeljković, Programme Associate for Good Governance and Gender Equality within European PROGRES.
As an example of good practice of mainstreaming good governance into infrastructural projects, the municipality of Bojnik presented the project of expansion of infrastructural capacities of the green market through construction of a building for sale of dairy products, administrative building, and strengthening institutional capacities for successful administration of the market. The municipality of Bojnik is one of the 16 municipalities that initiated the process of improvement and reforming good governance supported by the Programme.
Moreover, men and women who participated in the workshop were able to exchange experiences through discussions and group work in addition to using concrete examples so as to identify the needs of municipalities in terms of improvement of business activities and successful implementation of good governance reforms in their respective municipalities.
The European PROGRES Programme will pay special attention to activities in the field of good governance while striving to assist local self-governments to improve their work though mainstreaming the principles of efficiency, transparency, accountability, citizen participation and prohibition of discrimination.
The Programme will organise its activities relating to improvement of good governance along with realisation of a number of workshops aimed at strengthening municipal good governance capacities and initiating structural reforms of local governance.
