19 July 2019 - European Projects, their writing and implementation make ten years of experience in Tivat Municipality, which can be characterized by many challenges and successes for the officials and associates. On the role of operational structures for the implementation of the IPA Cross-Border Cooperation Program BiH - Montenegro for the period 2014-2020 spoke secretary of the Secretariat for Tourism and Entrepreneurship of Tivat Municipality Petar Vujović at a promotional meeting organized by the Office for European Integration of the Government of Montenegro and the Directorate for European Integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
"The basic problem that existed at the beginning, and now to a lesser extent is the absence of an institutional framework in local self-government when it comes to European projects. It exists to some extent, but it is not institutionalized and unified at the level of Montenegro as a whole, so somewhere we have the office for writing European projects, somewhere there is a Service, and in some municipalities it is somewhat systematized in the Secretariat, as is the case in the municipality of Tivat. I believe that people who write projects can make their full contribution through institutionalization," Vujovic believes.
The second challenge has been the fluctuation of personnel, i.e., it was very difficult to find adequate motivation for writing and implementing projects, as the people who worked on the project worked through contract, though their permanent employment would have allowed them to have a more relaxed approach to work.
The third challenge and the problem in many municipalities, according to Vujovic, is the lack of technical documentation, which needs to be prepared for a particular project before writing. As an example, he mentioned the public lighting project which, for lack of technical documentation, almost did not fail.
"Looking at the side of success, I can say that Tivat has so far applied for more than 40 European projects, of which 17 have been approved. We managed to get around 3.5 million euros of grants for our local self-government. What has strengthened us in terms of administrative capacity is that we have been a leading partner in two projects. It has been a tremendous experience, the great and painstaking work behind this "unfortunate" function - to be a leading partner. " For the next period, Vujovic announced that the municipality would continue to strengthen administrative capacity, together with the partners, to raise awareness of the importance and benefits of European projects. Miodrag Račeta, Head of the Section for European Territorial Cooperation, Office for European Integration of the Government of Montenegro and Nada Bojanić, Head of the Service for Territorial Cooperation Programs, Directorate for European Integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina also spoke at the meeting.
Source: Radio Tivat
