Official launch of European Year for Development in Croatia and the meeting with Commissioner Mimica

On 13th of February in Croatian Parliament, Commissioner for International Cooperation and Development Neven Mimica and Minister of Foreign and European Affairs of Croatia Vesna Pusić, opened European Year for Development 2015 (EYD2015).

On that occasion two round tables were organized, where civil society representatives together with government representatives shared experiences of croatian development cooperation and development aid. Once again Platform CROSOL was presented, and president of CROSOL Gordan Bosanac explained the projects that Platform is going to implement as a part of EYD2015.

After the official part president of CROSOL had a meeting with Commissioner Mimica, where he explained the problems of so-called „Development education and awareness raising – DEAR calls“ that small European platforms are facing. The European Commission is giving funds through DEAR calls, but only for big projects and to „big players“ which means small platforms do not have sufficient capacities to apply or implement this kind of projects. CROSOL and other EU13 platforms started the advocacy initiative in order to change that, and they are asking the Commission to give smaller grants through DEAR calls. Their request got approval from other, bigger EU platforms, and eventually the letter that had been written for Commissioner Mimica was signed by 25 European platforms.

Commissioner agreed that there should be equal opportunities for small and big platforms,  he has promised that he will personally take attention on what is going on with the call and criteria, and that the call has to be open towards potential “consortium of small NGOs”. He agreed that more administrative burden on the commission should not be barrier for awarding more grants. 

The letter was also given to minister of foreign and European affairs Vesna Pusić, to representative of European Commission in Croatia and to MEP and member of Development Committee of the EP Davor Ivo Stier.

The letter is attached here.

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