Starting this year, the cities and municipalities of Serbia can use the opportunity to find partner municipalities and cities in the European Union and in this way learn from their experiences in improving the quality of life of their citizens. This is a European Union programme called URBACT, for which local governments from Serbia can submit project proposals until 31 March. Project applications prepared by networks of cities and municipalities are submitted to the Secretariat of the programme in electronic format via the URBACT programme website. For more information on the competition requirements, all potential participants can contact the Ministry of European Integration, which is the contact point for URBACT in the Republic of Serbia.
For 20 years, the URBACT programme has been supporting cities and municipalities across Europe in order to solve communal problems through the exchange of knowledge and experience and thus contribute to their own development. So far, more than 1,000 European cities have benefited from the support of this programme, and they have created around 150 networks within which they cooperate. As of this year, the European Union, on the initiative of the Ministry of European Integration, ensured Serbia’s participation in this programme. This enables our cities and municipalities to improve their urban development policies through projects financed by URBACT and to improve the participation of citizens in the processes of planning and implementing those policies.
The Minister of European Integration, Tanja Miščević, rated as very good news the fact that Serbia was the first among the countries of the Western Balkans to get the opportunity to participate in the URBACT programme. That will enable our cities to come up with the best solutions for improving the quality of life of their citizens, together with cities across Europe. “In Europe, 75 per cent of the population lives in urban areas, so cities are actually the agents of changes in society. This programme supports that potential for change, helping cities and municipalities respond to contemporary challenges of organisation and quality of life in large settlements. It encourages them to enable their residents to have a cleaner environment, better public transportation, social protection that would better suit the needs of vulnerable categories of citizens, as well as to implement all the changes to their communities that would contribute to their well-being”, emphasised Minister Miščević.
We remind you that the Ministry of European Integration coordinates the participation of our country in ten European territorial cooperation programmes, including now URBACT, and that it provides support to all institutions from Serbia that are interested in the application for projects. These are programmes that provide financing for projects in border regions – those on Serbia’s border with EU member states and neighbours from the region, functional areas of the Danube and Adriatic-Ionian regions – and now also with European cities, helping local communities and organisations improve their life or work. From 2004 to 2020, for these purposes, the European Union allocated more than EUR 400 million for the financing of more than 1,600 projects on the territory of Serbia, in which more than 1,000 partners participated, be it local self-governments, public enterprises, non-governmental organisations, museums, hospitals or schools. Together, Serbia, its neighbours and the EU have influenced the improvement of living conditions of hundreds of thousands of people with these projects.
