© European Union / Giedrė Daugėlaitė
On 20-21 January, 2025 ALDA was invited to join the 13th Annual Meeting of the Conference of the Regional and Local Authorities for the Eastern Partnership (CORLEAP).
Placed under the Polish Presidency of the European Union, this meeting was hosted by the Podkarpackie region and aimed at reviewing the perspectives for the Eastern Partnership (EaP) and CORLEAP in the new EU political cycle – strengthening the local and regional dimension of the EaP as well as initiating a collective effort to strengthen capacity building for the local and regional public administration in EaP countries.
The meeting was co-chaired by two distinguished members of ALDA: Tetiana YEHOROVA-LUTSENKO, Chair of Kharkiv Regional Council, CORLEAP Co-Chair and Aleksandra DULKIEWICZ (PL/EPP), Mayor of Gdańsk, Chair of the CoR Working Group for Ukraine, CORLEAP Bureau Member, who represented the President of the Committee.
During the sessions, members of the CORLEAP could share strong messages to EU institutions regarding the necessity to further support EaP as an efficient instrument that has delivered on its promises since Ukraine and Moldova have been granted the candidate status. Local and regional leaders called for a stronger attention to the specificity of their competences and responsibilities, remaining that 70% of the New Development Agenda will be implemented at local level and that they represent the closest level of governance to the citizens.
This meeting also represented a great opportunity to hear from the EU institutions the interest they have for local and regional governments in EaP, and learn about future opportunities of cooperation that would contribute to its new priorities.
During the 2nd part of the event, together with representatives from the College of Europe, DG NEAR and the Regional School of Public Administration (RePSA, Montenegro), ALDA was represented by its Governing Board Member Marta Sys, from the Mercury Foundation. Ms. Sys shared our upcoming capacity-building activities for local and regional governments in the EaP. Indeed, the very history of ALDA is connected with enlargement since it started some 30 years ago in Western Balkans, with the aim to reconnect citizens with local governments through participatory democracy. ALDA was then involved in the Eastern Partnership process, with the Local Democracy Agency in Georgia established in 2004 and the Local Democracy Agency in Armenia in 2011. We have also been actively involved in capacity building activities in Ukraine for more than 10 years.
With the support of our institutional partners, including DG NEAR, the program U-LEAD with Europe, the Committee of the Regions with whom we signed a MoU to further cooperate, notably on this aspect of capacity building for local governments, as well as the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, ALDA and its members will continue working on good governance, participatory democracy, Green Reconstruction, EU project management and will explore other aspects that could help bringing Ukrainian local and regional governments closer to the EU.
