For the first time since Croatia’s EU accession, a Twinning* project has been awarded to Croatia for implementation and it will take place in Serbia.
For six months, Serbian authorities will benefit from the experience of Croatian and Spanish public experts on transfusion medicine. The aim is to strengthen national institutional capacities in the field of Substances of Human Origins (SoHO) and thus to improve the safety of blood in transfusion and transplantation.
The project also seeks to improve the surveillance and inspectorate system and to establish a National Quality System within the Ministry of Health and within the institutions in the area of SoHO, in line with EU standards and best practices in this field.
The project will start in the second half of 2017. It is a good example of how EU efforts can foster bigger cooperation and dialogue among countries in the Western Balkans.
The role of countries like Croatia, which joined the EU in relatively recent times, is particularly key in this sense, as it can offer its close neighbours valuable expertise on the requirements of the accession process.
* Twinning is one of the Commission’s key instruments to provide peer-to-peer, on-the-ground cooperation between EU countries and Enlargement and Neighbourhood’s public administrations.
