Conference on Inter-municipal Co-operation

The UNDP BRC, Council of Europe, OSCE and LGI/OSI are jointly organizing a Conference on Inter-municipal Co-operation  In 2008-2010, the Council of Europe, the UNDP Regional Centre in Bratislava and the Local Government and Public Service Reform Initiative of the Open Society Institute (LGI) implemented a series of regional workshops and developed a set of tools on IMC including: a) a Manual, b) a Guide for Practitioners, c) a Training programme and a IMC trainers’ Library and d) an IMC Web-site. The event will help take stock of current trends and experiences and design the way forward to improving the environment for, and practice of, IMC in Europe. The objectives of the Conference will be to: - exchange views and experiences, and discuss concrete initiatives on IMC, at central and local level, identifying key challenges and possible solutions; - elaborate and agree a series of recommendations for further action to improve environment for, and practice of, IMC; - promote the use of the new package of tools (toolkit) on IMC, developed jointly by CoE-UNDP-LGI; - promote the principles of good governance (the European Strategy on Good Governance and Innovation) and new approaches to resilient local development (UNDP Focus programme 5). The Conference will bring together Ministers, State Secretaries, Deputy Ministers of local government, senior officials and elected representatives of local authorities and their associations, other relevant national and international organisations from: - countries involved in the preparation of the CoE-UNDP-LGI resource pack on IMC: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo , Montenegro, Serbia, Slovakia, Macedonia; - countries willing to launch initiatives on IMC: Armenia, Moldova, Romania, Russian Federation, Turkey, Ukraine. Senior officials, representatives and consultants of the CoE, UNDP, LGI – OSI and other key international partners (OSCE Vienna, Swiss Co-operation Agency, SIDA, VNG Int, NALAS) will also attend and support the event.