European Best Practice Award for Coastal Towns
Announcement of the results
Thursday 26 April 2012, Lobby of the Hemicycle, 11.50 am
Keith Whitmore, President of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities
Mr President,
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The initiative to reward best local practices for the regeneration of coastal towns was launched by the Council of Europe in January 2012, in the framework of the Chairmanship by the United Kingdom of the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers.
This initiative became known as the Best Practice Award Programme for European Coastal Towns. It was carried out by the Council of Europe Centre of Expertise for Local Government Reform, in partnership with the Congress, the Parliamentary Assembly, the Local Government Association of the United Kingdom, the UK Chairmanship as well as the future Albanian Chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers, whose representatives made up the Steering Committee of the Programme. I had the honour of chairing this Steering Committee which met twice since the launch of the Programme.
The reason behind the Best Award Programme was that today, many European costal communities are facing downward trends. Traditional coastal industries have declined, combined with unfavourable demographic changes and natural influences such as coastal erosion and flooding. Many of these coastal towns are also facing serious problems due to the economic and financial crisis.
However, there are coastal local authorities in many countries that achieve high standards in many aspects of their work. Many of them innovate and successfully experiment with new and interesting solutions to problems which are common to many local communities. The aim of this Programme is to identify, celebrate and award local authorities with such practices and consequently make that knowledge and experience available for sharing with other local authorities.
The Steering Committee was very impressed with the level of response to this initiative, with 67 expressions of interest received which translated into 48 full applications. I would like to thank our experts on the Selection Panel which provided the evaluation of the submitted projects.
It is a great pleasure for me to announce today the winners of the Best Practice Award Programme, as well as those whose projects were selected for the final round of the competition – the nominees for the Best Practice Award. They are:
Winners:
1st Prize: City of Yevpatoria (Ukraine)
Joint 2nd Prize: Bournemouth Borough Council (United Kingdom)
Canterbury City Council (United Kingdom)
Joint 3rd Prize: Municipality of Heroy (Norway)
Municipality of Zadar [zah-DAR] (Croatia)
Nominees are: Southampton (United Kingdom)
Great Yarmouth (United Kingdom), which received two nominations for two submitted projects
East Riding (United Kingdom)
Heraklion (Greece)
Murter Kornati [MOOR-ter kor-NAH-ti] (Croatia)
Aviles [ah-vee-LESS] (Spain)
Le Havre (France)
Odessa (Ukraine)
Bibinje [bee-bee-NEEYE] (Croatia)
In addition, several non-European applications were admitted and evaluated on the same criteria as everyone else. Among those, the project from Ashkelon in Israel has received as high a score as other nominees in the general competition.
Last but not least, I thought it would be appropriate to give a Special Certificate to the only province which submitted an application, the Province of Barcelona in Spain, to encourage innovative practices in support of coastal towns at the provincial and regional level.
I wish to extend my congratulations to the winners and nominees, who are invited to the Award Ceremony which will take place in Blackpool, United Kingdom, on 9 May. I would like to express my gratitude to the authorities of Blackpool and the UK Local Government Association for organising this event. I also wish to thank all members of the Steering Committee and the secretariat of this project for their commitment and hard work in this very short timeframe to make this initiative a success.
Thank you.