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16^th Session of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe

Strasbourg, 5 March 2009

Speech by Marija Katovic (Montenegro, SOC) Mayor of Kotor, on transfrontier cooperation

Dear Colleagues,

Euro district of the South Adriatic sea has come into existence based on a European Convention project, signed in Madrid in 1980 by the Member States of Council of Europe. Euro District represents a harmonic part of an Adriatic cooperation network and it should play a significant part within the Adriatic Euro Region.

Euro District includes 17 communes of Montenegro, Albania and Italy.

The relationships between the members of the South Adriatic Euro District are set by a Convention that regulates its organisation and its functioning.

By establishing Euro District, the signatories of this convention aim to improve the common capacities development of the South Adriatic Sea countries throughout the reinforcement of the institutional competence and cooperation between local communities and the authorities on the given territories in order to achieve following prior goals:

Euro District aims to become the Adriatic Sea region that will set bases for the European common district, based on sustainable development, social cohesion and culture dialogue.

Euro District aims to give a positive contribution to the activities of the Euro region throughout membership and participation in its internal bodies as well as through promoting autonomous cooperation initiatives in all districts that are in conformity with the entire strategy which can guarantee dealing with the specific initiatives concerning the organization.

Euro District aims to foster and maintain the cooperative projects promoted by the public and private entities, with the guaranteed support of the local institutions.

Euro District aims to include directly citizens in cooperative activities in order to develop instruments of local democracy and to strengthen the feeling of belonging to the common history and European culture.

In order to realize the intended aims, the members of the South Adriatic Euro District must promote, govern and support the initiatives of the territorial cooperation, projects and programs in following prior fields:

In the domain of fishing, Euro District will take steps of cooperation concerning the transfer of technology, technical aid, knowledge and skills, important for production, manufacturing, process and marketing of fish and aqua cultural products.

It will  promote complementarity concerning the industry, labelled and tagged quality products, trade and commercial exchange, professional activities of the training and the sustainable development of the fishing and aqua cultural activities.

In the domain of agro industry, Euro District will take actions of collaboration concerning the transfer of technology, technical aid, knowledge and skills, important for production of agro food, organic agriculture, labelled and tagged quality products,   trade and commercial exchange, sustainable development of the agricultural activities, the best practices concerning the organizational models of the industry.

In the field of natural environment, it will work on promotion of sustainable territorial development models in conformity with 21 principles of the Local Agenda, it will take actions to preserve the marine ecosystem, to promote collective programs of research on integrated management of coastal areas, to promote acquired experience and the best practices related to the hazard control and the influence on physical and social environment and to promote the policy instruments of protection of the physical and social environment ( monitoring of physical and social environment, controlling the protective environment systems etc.).

In the field of sustainable tourism, it will promote sustainable tourism models, harmless to the natural environment in conformity with 21 principles of the Local Agenda.

It will promote collaboration projects concerning the industry and the professional activities of the training:

-               to promote tourism, gastronomy, culture and collaboration programs for the development of the rural tourism.

-               to develop academic collaboration concerning the tourism economy.

-               to advocate the construction of ports for sport, entertainment and leisure activities.

-               In the field concerning universities, research and culture Euro District will take:

-               measures for the development of academic and cultural collaboration between schools, universities and research organizations.

-               measures in order to preserve and foster artistic, linguistic and cultural heritage.

-               measures to develop the cultural exchange and to preserve and foster traditions, culture and national minority languages.

In the domain of traffic, Euro District considers that it is necessary to develop  traffic links for tourism and commercial purposes, to set up an infrastructural traffic network( Trade and entertainment outlets in ports)

In the domain of Health and Social Aid, Euro District will:

-               work on acquired experience and promoting professional training courses.

-               take measures in order to transfer technology, knowledge and skills.

-               develop cooperation concerning the prevention and will establish  the network of training course centres.

Concerning the local democracy, Euro District deems that it is necessary to promote experience exchange, good practices and opportunities to train employees of local governmental bodies:

Development of instruments of good behaviour and participating democracy( Status of the local selfgovernment, participating monitoring etc.)

Promoting civil rights and models, which are promoted by European Institutions.

In order to achieve the intended aims, big institutional investment are indispensable so that the convergence of common development of the models can be obtained.

Public policies should aim at:

-               Improving the qualities of local public services.

-               Harmonizing and improving the social policy.

-               Improving the governing and planning, focusing more on cooperation and local development.

To direct the economic integration process of frontier territories, to build territorial partnership(public private) and international cooperation that will act as a socioeconomic instrument and that will be focused on growth and partnership development in the given geographical area.

The correlation between the European Region and the rest of the world has drawn attention to the integrations the actual Euro District countries are part of. We consider that European Mediterranean  countries such as Montenegro, Italy and Albania should and must play an important part in this collaboration, representing a bridge that will link the regions.

The whole European Region can be democratic, successful and able to promote values, only if its neighbours’ authorities are also stable and prosperous. Our relationship should be based on a collaboration and partnership with the countries of the Mediterranean region in order to eradicate together social and economic causes of instability, to strengthen democracy and to stimulate the dialogue between the different cultures.

The members of Euro district strongly believe in this partnership, in its aims and its values and this is why they will continue to foster them.

We believe that today, we have already made a little, but a considerable step forward and that we will contribute to even stronger and more prolific collaboration in the future.

New members may join Euro District, if respecting law and responsibilities of Euro District.

Euro District will give a positive contribution to the activities throughout the membership and participation in its internal bodies, initializing  and advocating  all the collaboration projects.