The Standing Conference of Towns and Municipalities, National Association of Local Authorities in Serbia, with support of Sweden and in cooperation with Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SALAR), implements the programme focused on creating better overall framework for strengthening the local government sector in the process of Serbia's integration into EU.
The Programme aims to contributing to strengthened democracy, equitable and sustainable development in relation to local governance and closer ties between Serbia and EU. It is expected that Programme will, by the end of its implementation, contribute substantially to the EU integration process at the level of local government.
This programme of support to local authorities in Serbia and SCTM, Sweden approved for financing on December 13th 2011, when the agreement was signed. Duration of the Programme is 36 months, closing on December 14th 2014.
The Programme is based upon bilateral cooperation between two sister organizations of local governments SALAR and the SCTM, providing for a consistent approach to assistance to Serbian local governments in the context of EU integration of Serbia. Each association has a special role within the Programme. While the SCTM is the main implementing partner, SALAR will primarily act as a resource base for providing international expertise i.e. the role of Swedish partner is transfer of know-how between Serbian and Swedish local authorities.
The special value of this partnership-based Programme lies in the possibility to enable knowledge transfer based on peer-to-peer approach between local government official from Sweden to Serbia, on one hand, and between SALAR and SCTM expert staff, on the other.
Programme components
Since a general objective of the Programme is to support local authorities in Serbia's integration into EU, this comprehensive programme is divided into four thematic areas/components and fifth related to SCTM's capacity strengthening. The Programme components, each designed to identify problems and suggest solutions through different types of intervention, are as follows:
Contact person in SCTM is Vladimir Jovanovic, Programme Manager, vladimir.jovanovic@skgo.org.