Development Office Newsletter: Issue N°2 2011

The Development Office is visiting the European Neighbourhood Policy countries

Since May and during the coming months, the team responsible for the implementation of the regional project “Preparing staff for EU-ENP related jobs” will visit the 16 European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) participant countries. The College of Europe – Development Office (Bruges in cooperation with Natolin) is managing this EU-funded project that will last until 2013.

From Lebanon, already visited in May, to Morocco, Algeria or Jordan in the south, and from Azerbaijan, Georgia or Armenia to Belarus in the east, the team leader and the course manager will be meeting the national focal points, a designated public official per country, in the capital cities, to discuss the various activities to be developed in the framework of this project.

The purpose of these visits is threefold: (1) to give visibility to the project activities to relevant stakeholders in each country; (2) to assess the training needs on EU affairs in general and on the ENP policy in particular of each participant country’s public administration officials; and (3) to conduct a mapping exercise of all the training programmes or similar projects already implemented in the past years.

All along the project, key lecturers of the College of Europe will train a maximum of 480 officials, coming from ENP countries on EU affairs. The participants will be relevant staff from governmental bodies (public administrations, public bodies and semi-governmental organisations, local authorities, etc.) who wish to improve their knowledge on EU-ENP affairs or to deepen their expertise.

Feel free to visit the website of the project to find more information on the project and its activities : www.eu-enprelatedjobs.eu (to be activated soon)

In 2011 Serbian officials Speak European! at the College of Europe

To date, a total of 54 Serbian civil servants and public administration employees have actively taken part in a three-week training course in the framework of the European Integration Scholarships – Speak European! project. A third group will be trained on 4 to 22 July.

Three courses of three weeks each will be organised in 2011, and two editions have already taken place, respectively  starting on 21 March, and on the symbolic 9 May. Most of the curriculum took place in Bruges, and the team of selected experts trained the groups on the following topics: EU structures and decision-making procedures; EU enlargement policy; legislative harmonisation with the EU acquis; policy-making and reforms in the process of the European integration; pre- and post-accession EU funds; negotiations on specific acquis chapters.

The curriculum also included study visits to the EU institutions in Brussels: meetings with high-level officials from the European Commission and the Council of the EU, focussing on Serbia’s way to the EU, as well as a panel discussion in the Committee of the Regions with representatives from Brussels-based regional offices. Participants also very much valued the opportunity offered by the course team at the College of Europe to have a personal meeting with stakeholders on the European or Belgian level – and a few participants even had four of those meetings!

These training courses are organised by the Development Office of the College of Europe, in the framework of a EuropeAid project funded by the European Commission. We look very much forward to welcoming the third group from 4 to 22 July

New EU Contract Award on Green Public Procurement

The Development Office of the College of Europe, in consortium with the Centre of European Public Studies, has been awarded, by DG Environment, a study on “Monitoring the uptake of Green Public Procurement in the EU”. The study started in May 2011 and should be completed by December 2011.

The monitoring exercise will measure to which extent the Member States have used green criteria for the ten product and service groups included in the first set of EU Green Public Procurement (GPP) criteria. The ten groups are: cleaning products and services; construction; electricity; catering and food; gardening; office IT equipment; copying and graphic paper; textiles; transport; and furniture. The level of uptake of GPP in the Member States will be measured in quantitative terms.

The main of role of the Development Office of the College of Europe in this study is to set up and manage the network of legal experts that will deal with the information and data collection activities foreseen for the purposes of this study.