We sincerely hope you and your close ones are doing ok during these extremely challenging times. This is a situation which is new to all of us and affects both our private and professional lives. It is also a time where difficult and restrictive political decisions have to be made rapidly. This notwithstanding, we find it important that partnerships are not forgotten and that the voice of those affected by policies is taken into account as – hopefully – there will be a normalisation of the situation in the not too distant future, and a lot of recovery work will have to be done.

Following the high-level conference “Engaging Citizens for Good Governance in Cohesion Policy”, we have a few points of information:

CALL FOR EXPRESSION OF INTEREST FOR AUTHORITIES – EXTENDED DEADLINE

As announced at the conference, managing authorities and intermediate bodies of ERDF and CF operational programmes are invited to apply to participate in the pilot project “Engaging citizens in the implementation of cohesion policy”. If selected, they will benefit from tailored advisory support in developing a closer cooperation with citizens and/or civil society organisations in the implementation of cohesion policy. The advisory support will be provided in close cooperation with the OECD. Please see the call for expression of interest. The deadline to apply has been extended to 30 April 2020.

On the same page you will also find a call for expression of interest for central coordination bodies and managing authorities to participate in a pilot on civic engagement in monitoring EU-funded projects in the “Open Cohesion School”, with a deadline 16 April 2020.

OPEN CALL FOR CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANISATIONS

As announced at the conference, we have also just launched an open call for proposals targeting civil society. Civil society organisations are invited to submit their proposals for tools or actions supporting citizen engagement in the implementation of cohesion policy. The call is available here with a deadline to apply by 31 May 2020.

EXPERTS WANTED

If you have expertise and experience in cooperation between authorities and citizens/CSO and are willing to share your knowledge, we would be happy to hear from you.

• If you are an external expert from a CSO, academia etc. we invite you to express your interest to support the implementation of the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) by submitting your application for our “AMI list” of experts here.
• If you are a civil servant (at any level) from an EU member state, with proven experience in engaging citizens in policy-making and implementation, you are welcome to apply to share your expertise under the REGIO Peer-2-Peer scheme. REGIO P2P offer managing authorities, intermediate bodies and other institutions involved in the management of funding under ERDF and Cohesion fund, a chance to meet and exchange practices on how to engage citizens in cohesion policy. Apply online and we will help you find the best expertise to respond to your needs.

We would also like to remind you of our conference website where you will find information about the speakers, recordings of all plenary sessions, a conference report, statistics from the survey we were running in Member States and during the conference and more.

Best regards,