Although the crisis caused by the COVID19 pandemic also affected the activities of the Support to Participation in EU Programs project a way was found to offer potential applicants for some of the 12 EU programs available to Serbia an alternative and continue training.
"Like many others, we reoriented ourselves to online training and in May organized three on how to project proposals. We presented one of the EU programmes - "Europe for Citizens", says project Team Leader Maximilian Foedinger.
More than 350 participants confirmed the need to continue this type of training, and the guests of the were representatives of institutions - Tanja Cincar Knezevic, program manager from the Delegation of the European Union to Serbia and Ana Drljevic, representative of the Ministry of European Integration, which is the project main beneficiary.
Cincar Knezevic said that the programming of the new financial perspective IPA 3 (2021-2027) was prolonged due to the crisis caused by the COVID19 and wasn't adopted at the recent EU summit in Zagreb. At the same time, the crisis has led to a delay or even suspension of current and the start of new EU projects explained the program manager in the EU Delegation.
"There are 12 EU programmes available in Serbia, and we expect an increase in their number. Since after the first analysis we were not satisfied with the number of domestic projects, now our goal is to correct the shortcomings through projects like this - Support for participation in EU programmes - and have as many successful projects from Serbia as possible," said the representative of the EU Delegation to Serbia. She emphasized that the goal is to increase the visibility of the EU programmes, and to build capacities of the national contact persons to respond to the needs of the applicants.
MEI representative Ana Drljevic expressed satisfaction that the project quickly adapted to the new circumstances and continued with the planned training through webinars. She believes that it is important to continue with project activities.
"I hope that the response to the upcoming webinars will be as high as possible because the participants will have the opportunity to ask questions to lecturers, experts who have many years of experience applying for projects within EU programmes. It is also planned to present certain EU programmes by national contact persons, which is also an opportunity for participants to get answers to many questions that can help their future application" said Ana Drljevic.
One of the 12 available programmes are "Europe for Citizens" and the Office for Cooperation with Civil Society of the Government of the Republic of Serbia is responsible for programmes promotion. In cooperation with the office, we presented the programme at one of the most visited webinars. The national contact person in charge of the programme, Sanja Atanaskovic Opacic, explained the structure and key characteristics of the programme, its goals and priorities and possibilities for application. She explained in detail how to prepare the documentation for the project proposal, how to define the budget and how to fill in the application form. Atanaskovic Opacic also announced that the new deadline for projects application within the "Europe for Citizens" program is September 1.
"Last year, 47 users applied as a project holder, and 9 projects were approved. However, as many as 76 organizations had a partner status on approved projects and about 400 thousand euros were withdrawn, which is seven times more money than Serbia's annual participation in this programme" said the national contact person for this EU programme.
Since there is great interest in webinars and in presenting EU programmes in this way, the project will continue to organize them in June. All webinars are available on the online training platform on EU programmes.