Oriano Otočan is the new President of ALDA, the Association of Local Democracy Agencies. He represents The Istria Region, Croatia, where he served first as a Member of the Regional Government, and afterwards as Director of Department in charge of international cooperation and European integration.
He has been elected by the Governing Board of ALDA, that has been renewed by the General Assembly the of the Association.

In the Bureau, with Otočan, has been elected also Imislawa Gorska, Principal of the International School of Bydgoszcz, Poland, Vice president, Alessandro Perelli, Friuli Venezia Giulia Region, Italy, Vice president, Paula Rauzan, Delegate of the local Democracy Agency of Sisak, Croatia, Secretary, and Roger Lawrence, Municipality of Wolverhampton, United Kingdom, Treasurer.
Other elected members of the Governing Board will be for the next four years also Per Vinther, past President, Alain Tourret, Vice president of Lower Normandy Region, Mircea Cosma, President of Prahova County, Romania, Valery Deschamps, President of the Association “Maison de l’Europe”, Caen, France, Dobrica Milovanovic, Deputy Mayor of the City of Kragujevac, Serbia, Ruggiero Mennea, Councillor of Apulia Region, Italy, and Lucio Gregoretti, Municipality of Monfalcone, Italy.
“It is important to continue the ALDA activities in the countries of South East Europe – stated Oriano Otočan, new ALDA President – because, if it is true that Croatia will be soon an EU member, is also true that other countries are still too much centralised, and have in front other steps toward the EU integration. ALDA can be surely an actor in this path and can be helpful to provide and support these countries in achieving the necessary requests.
Also thanks to its experiences in Croatia, ALDA will work to guarantee a stronger citizen participation, the strengthening of local authorities and a development that meets the needs of citizens”.

Strengthening citizens’ and local authorities’ role in the good local governance of all the European and neighbouring countries and facilitate cooperation between local authorities and civil society.
These will be the objectives of ALDA’s activity also for the next years. ALDA members are discussing the future strategies and programmes of the Association in the General Assembly that is taking place in Udine (Italy), hosted by Friuli Venezia Giulia Region and Udine Municipality.
ALDA members have elected the new Governing Board that will lead the Association for the next four years.
The new Governing Board will be presented tomorrow, during the second session of the General Assembly.
Members have also debated and approved the balance and the activity programme for 2012.
Tomorrow (8 June), the General Assembly will discuss ALDA strategy 2020 and multiannual programmes.

The 14th edition of Med’Educ organised by the association U’Marinu took place on the ship of SNCM, Danielle Casanova, in Marseille (France) on 30th of May and was followed by the General Assembly of the French network of the Anna Lindh Foundation.
Marine Henry, ALDA’ project manager, attended this edition of Med Educ as well as the General Assembly of the French network of Anna Lindh Foundation.
Med’ Educ is an annual event organised around three main pillars: education, sustainable development and Mediterranean.
The theme chosen in 2012 was “Volunteering and Culture for sustainable development in Mediterranean: opportunities for civil society to be involved”. During the morning session it was discussed about the heritage of the Mediterranean area and challenges to be faced. As Tunisia was the invited country this year, a Tunisian Deputy, Mrs Nadia Chabaane, made an overview of the political situation in her country in an interview made by a French journalist, Mr Ahmed Jemai (Act Media). Then numerous representatives of Mediterranean networks of civil society presented their action to about 200 participants, who were attending this session. The afternoon was more focused on the field of volunteering as a tool for intercultural dialogue among “Mediterranean citizens”.
The Anna Lindh Foundation, launched in 2005, is the main network working with and for civil society in the Mediterranean area. Its purpose is to bring people together from across the Mediterranean to improve mutual respect between cultures and to support action across fields impacting on mutual perceptions among people of different cultures and beliefs. Anna Lindh Foundation (ALF) is developing a region-wide Network of over 3000 civil society organisations around 43 national networks.
The General Assembly of the French network was the occasion for Andreu Claret, General Director of ALF to present the new strategy of the foundation and to launch the Forum 2013 of ALF which will be held in Marseille from 4th to 7th April 2013 and will gather all FAL’ national networks and more than 1000 Mediterranean civil society organisations.

From Friday June 1 to Sunday June 3, ALDA attended the Global Citizen’s conference “Solutions by Re-thinking” at the Aarhus University, Denmark.
The “Great Debate” was promoted and organised by Global Citizen in connection to the Danish EU Presidency and with the support of the European Commission through the programme Europe for Citizens.
The meeting gathered together more than 400 interested citizens – representing organisations, associations, companies, parties, think tanks and universities, who debated about the problems and possibilities we face in Europe towards 2050: what are the key problems we need to tackle? what do the solutions look like? who should make it happen?
The meeting was particularly successful thanks to the intense and untraditional format that allowed and facilitated the development of a broad range of suggestions and ideas for tomorrows’ solutions. In order to reach this objective, 35 working groups focused on different specific problems within the areas of economy, demography, environment and social issues were created in order to find new solutions issues through a bottom-up approach.
In particular, Marco Boaria, Resources and Development Unit Coordinator of ALDA, participated to the working group focused on participatory democracy, one of the core issues of ALDA, contributing thus to the vivid debate and exchange and bringing to the fore the relevant expertise and experiences ALDA has gained on this field.
Furthermore, there were, among the others, key note speeches by Nicolai Wammen, the Danish Minister for European Affairs, and Mr. Sony Kapoor from the international Think Tank Re-Define.
The outcomes of the event will be available on the Global Citizen’s Facebook site.

“Promotion of youth volunteering and communication with public” is the title of a workshop that will take place in Latvia (4-5 June 2012) within the project VIT-Very Important Twinning, Volunteering in Town.
The Latvian Association of Local and Regional Governments (LALRG) will organise this international workshop in Gulbene municipality.
The workshop will focus on volunteering and aims at presenting good practices, opportunities and challenges on this field. It will be a good opportunity for debate on the future of this tool and on the ways to engage young people in voluntary work. The projectVIT aims at promoting volunteering in towns, addressing this issue from a participatory perspective. In particular, the project VIT wishes to create a platform involving different types of stakeholders that will encourage and revitalise twinning as a tool for long-lasting cooperation by promoting the EU values as democracy, volunteering and citizen participation.

ALDA, with its office in Vicenza, joined the membership of the CIME – Consiglio Italiano del Movimento Europeo. This step want to makes more systematic and synergic the common activities in Italy, in particular in view of the upcoming Year on Active Citizenship 2013.
The two organisation will join their efforts to promote the European values and a stronger involvement of citizens in the EU policies, also by acting jointly in Italy.

A conference on European Citizens Initiative will take place in Vicenza (Italy), promoted by ALDA, with the SMEs Association Confartigianato Vicenza and the European Federalist Movement.
The event is organised in the framework of the activities and information campaign launched by ALDA on the European Citizens Initiative .

ECI represents a new and innovative tool for citizens’ participation in Europe. Entered in force the 1st of April 2012, it will allow 1 million citizens from at least seven EU countries to invite the European Commission to bring forward proposals for legal acts in areas where the Commission has the power to do so.
“This is a challenging proposal, which needs to be fully understood by citizens. It does not represent a final step towards direct democracy but it is to be conceived as an important instrument for mobilisation of interest in Europe”. says Antonella Valmorbida, Director of ALDA.
A guide published by the European Union explains what the citizens’ initiative is about, how to sign up to initiatives and how to organise an initiative.

A seminar exploring the best practices in Romania in the field of volunteering, intergenerational dialogue and international solidarity took place in Bucharest (17-18 May) organised by AMR, the Association of Romanian Municipalities.
The event was the fifth local activity in the framework of ALDA project VIT – “Very Important Twinning, Volunteering in Town”.
The seminar was attended by 60 local and international participants and aimed at promoting in the country the best practices developed LAs and CSOs. Contributions from different Local Authorities, Embassies of France, Spain and UK, local NGOs stimulated the discussion among the participants. CEMR attended the meeting and presented PLATFORMA project.
ALDA was represented by Afonso Aliberti, Project Manager, who presented the experiences of WTD – Working Together for Development to promote the principles of international solidarity among LAs and CSOs and new tools to cooperate together to promote development cooperation practices from the grass root level.

On 13th of May 2012, ALDA participated with a stand at the Citizenship Festival organised in Padua. The association’ stand has shown to the young participants as the activities and the projects has evolved and still grown, since its born in 1999: in particular the intense collaboration with the western Balkans countries and the Southern Caucasus countries.
In this event, ALDA had the possibility to explain better its duties and goals and to present its network to a wide range of different targets and especially to young students, that could have the chance to start an internship in one of the ADL or the ALDA Offices thanks to the program Education without frontiers promoted by the University of Padua. We had the chance to present our activities to trainers, that could find interesting project to participate or some new ideas to improve their perception of citizenship participation; or simple curious people interested in these issues or just attracted to the stand for a few moments, that help us to create an outline of the meaning of active citizenship, in anticipation of 2013 that it is to be the European Year of active citizenship, just using a camera, some simple questions and the power of Word…
To delve further into this charming journey inside the Balkans influences, and in particular in the flavour of these countries, during the event it was possible to taste some typical products from the Balkan Region.
To conclude, the interconnections created during this event has deeply influenced all its participants: all the experiences gained, all the stories told and people met, has linked at the same times different parts of the World, different generations, different backgrounds and different issues (as education, environment, active ageing and so on) that could be melt up and still remain perfectly integrated.

Learning Cities , the Association of social promotion ” Rete per le Comunità che Apprendono “, is organizing, with the assistance of Local Authorities and the support of ALDA, the “Learning Coffee”  in Apulia Region. It’s a cycle of six meetings in six towns based on interactive discussions, expert testimony, projections and reflections shared.
The meetings, which began May 10, will end June 14.

The topics under discussion range from social, school, waste, environment, mobility, urban planning and energy, read in a degrowth key. Learning Cities, with the active participation of local associations, administrators and the public at meetings already held, wants to start a debate that stimulates the desire to experiment new styles of life inspired by the degrowth and lead to redefine the idea of the future.
All these issues will be addressed in the 3rd International Conference on “Degrowth for ecological sustainability and equity” (http://www.venezia2012.it/), to be held in Venice, 19 to 23 September 2012.

By Stanka Parac
ALDA SEE Regional Programmes Coordinator

Tomislav Nikolic, leader of the nationalist Serbian Progress Party won the presidential election held on Sunday 20th May in Serbia. Many concerns have been raised about the future prospects for democratic reforms and EU integration of Serbia that has only recently been granted the candidate status.
Continuity of decade long reforms on the way to EU thus interrupted, while the shocking shift to the right wing nationalistic rhetoric from the recent history of the Balkans is just something that many would like to remain in the past.
Estimations say that only 30.000 votes would be enough to prevent such a turn of events in Serbia.
The 46% turnout and less than 3% difference between the winner – nationalist Serbian Progress Party candidate Tomislav Nikolic and the loser – Democratic party candidate Boris Tadic of the presidential election held yesterday in Serbia are the two key results of the election year in this Western Balkan country that has recently been granted the candidate status on its way to EU integration. The forthcoming weeks will show if the voters just punished the former government for failing to respond to economic crisis, the highest ever unemployment rate and widespread corruption, or the election results are more an indication of general fatigue from the promises of the EU integration perspective as an excuse for constant postponing of the key social and economic reforms in this country. Thus, a very risky move by Boris Tadic– to have an early presidential election – was proven wrong and with far reaching negative consequences for the democratic reform process and EU integration of Serbia. However, it is important to note that Boris Tadic won the majority vote in the multicultural region of Vojvodina, and lost in the capital city – Belgrade and in central and south Serbia.
As a result – the two biggest political parties that have won the majority of votes influenced the further polarisation in the society around the key strategic issues (with particular regard to EU integration and Kosovo issue), while the formation of the new government which should be operational in three months might last much longer. However, this situation is some sort of déjà vu for many citizens and tax-payers in Serbia, like a merry-go- round from which it is impossible to escape. They have expressed their views by the ballot that, if fully respected by the parties that have won the majority vote, promotes political compromise for further policy reforms as the possible response for meeting a long list of challenges ahead: economic and financial crisis, unemployment, brain drain, EU integration process, relations with Kosovo, corruption….

In the frame of the “THINK.EU” project, last 7th – 11th May ALDA held a training course in Pula, Croatia, on “Project cycle management”, addressed to around 30 participants, representing CSOs, business community, LAs. The training was aimed to deliver know how on how to develop good quality projects.
Beside technical information on Project Cycle Management, it gave also hints and tips on how to build a winning partnership and on networking and lobbying aspects to support proposals and initiatives.
Getting Croatia ready for EU funding programmes…!
The project THINK.EU has been developed by the Foundation for Partnership and Civil Society Development of Region Istria and founded within the Europe for Citizens Programme. It has as main objective to support Croatian accession to the EU with a strong, deep and sustained dialogue between civil society actors, youth and children and citizens in Istria broadening the knowledge and understanding of the EU and the process of European integration and rising the quality and impartiality of media coverage on issues related to EU membership.

Tourism development is a common topic in the cooperation of French Municipalities with North Macedonia. This is what emerged from the third meeting of municipalities and communities from the Region Lower Normandy cooperating with municipalities from North Macedonia. The meeting took place on April 25 at the Regional Council of Lower Normandy to discuss the cooperation between cities from the two territories.
At this meeting, organised and animated by the Regional Council of Lower Normandy and the Association Horizons Solidaires, representatives from the municipalities of Caen, Ifs, Hermanville-sur-Mer and Cherbourg as well as the communities of St. James, Ouistreham and Fleury-sur-Orne discussed their cooperation with North Macedonia. This was an excellent opportunity for the local authorities to learn more on political, economic and social situation in Macedonia, but most of all to exchange experiences of their individual cooperation.
Tourism development is a common topic for all municipalities, and as such was discussed on thematic workshop held in the afternoon of the meeting. Given the impact that tourism can have on territorial development, possibility of creating joint project was discussed for the near future.
The group of Macedonian local authorities cooperating with Lower Normandy will meet in May in Skopje. The meeting of both groups will be scheduled in September in Lower Normandy.
In the framework of the Decentralised cooperation between Lower Normandy and North Macedonia, there are currently seven active town twining’s, and more pairings are planned in the future. The town twinning segment builds up contacts and friendship with communities from the two territories and promotes better understanding. The Programme for Decentralised cooperation is coordinated by ALDA.

Strengthening citizens’ and local authorities’ role in the good local governance of all the European and neighbouring countries and facilitate cooperation between local authorities and civil society.
These main objectives of ALDA’s activity will be continued next June, on the occasion of the General Assembly 2012 of the Association, with two international Conferences and the discussion on ALDA strategy 2020. The event will take place in Udine, Italy, on the 7th and 8th of June.

ALDA General Assembly will start in the morning (8.45-13.00) of 7th and continue in the morning (9.00-13.00) of 8th. ALDA members will elect the new Governing Board that will lead the Association for the next four years, and will debate, also with partners, and approve the ALDA 2020 and multiannual programme.
In the afternoon of the first day (7th June) will be held the first International Conference on the issue “Strengthening the role of citizens and local governance in the neighbouring Countries: lessons learned and opportunities from East to South”.
During the conference, promoted by ALDA and the Region Friuli Venezia Giulia, starting from a position paper by ALDA, the discussion will focus on the role of European Authorities and NGOs on promoting the participation of Civil Society on local governance.
For many years, European institutions, local authorities and civil society have been active to support democracy and good governance in Eastern Europe and in Western Balkans. The European Union decided a further enlargement towards South Eastern Europe and developed new forms of cooperation with Eastern partners. How this experience could be of benefit of southern countries, which are living a new and difficult spring? How to do it and bring an added value? Is it appropriate to do it? Which methodology to adopt in this case?
In the afternoon of the second day (8th June), will take place the second International Conference on the issue “Active Ageing and local governance: the elderly people as actors of active citizenship at the local level”, with the support of the EC Programme Europe for Citizens.
During the conference best practices by ALDA’s partners on the field of active ageing and the role of senior in twinning will be shared. As good practices from the Region Friuli Venezia Giulia, the case of Trieste will be presented.