How to make Serbia as successful as possible in participating in EU programmes which finance a large number of projects in various fields, and thus, in addition, preparing for the Union accession, was the main topic of the presentation of the project “Support to Participating in EU Programmes”.
In the next two years, with the support of a project funded by the EU with one million and four hundred thousand euros, the Ministry of European Integration will improve the potential of Serbia to use funds earmarked for EU programmes.
“This is the second cycle of the program in which we participate and now it is necessary to increase the quality and number of projects, as well as the amount of funds that we absorb from the EU program. Since the money from the budget of Serbia is allocated for participation in this program, it is necessary that the funds that we withdraw from the projects are greater than the money we invest”, says Ana Drljević from the Ministry of European Integration.
As a candidate country for EU membership, Serbia participates in programmes such as Horizon 2020, the Competitiveness Program for Small and Medium Enterprises – Cosme, Erasmus +, Creative Europe, Fiscalis 2020, Customs 2020 and others, which financially support high-quality projects of the EU Member States and candidate countries , and Serbia’s goal is to make domestic projects as representative as possible. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to improve the capacities of institutions and potential project applicants in order to find an adequate program for their project and to prepare it as best as possible.
“In order to improve the effectiveness of EU programmes in Serbia, it is necessary to further train national contact persons for the implementation of the program, as well as to improve coordination between the Ministry for European Integration and other institutions”, says the Programme Manager from EU Delegation to Serbia Tanja Cincar Knežević and emphasizes that in order to achieve a better understanding of the programme, they need their greater visibility in the public.
For each EU programme in Serbia, there are contact persons who are in charge of helping potential participants in identifying ideas, writing projects, finding partners and project management. The national contact persons, the administrative bodies of the Government of Serbia dealing with projects, as well as scientific institutions, civil society organizations, businesses, students and other potential participants in EU programmes, are the groups to whom the project is intended and to which attention will be directed.
Since national contact persons should provide concrete assistance to potential participants in EU programmes for all levels of reporting, a seminar was held for them during the presentation of the project. Through successful examples from Estonia, Poland, and Bulgaria, it is presented what kind of task a contact person has and how they should be successfully implemented.
In particular, it was about the newspapers brought by the next seven-year cycle of the EU program, on changes to the rules relating to financing, reporting and project management. The project “Support to Participation in EU Programmes” through a series of workshops and training will continuously work on the training of EU staff management programmes and on providing support to potential applicants.
