Our Vice-President, Ms Anna Magyar, delivered Enlargement Day opening remarks on behalf of the European Committee of the Regions in a plenary session that took place on 5 May in Brussels. Ukrainian local and regional representatives attended the CoR Enlargement Day for the first time joining their peers from the Western Balkans and Türkiye.
The CoR's rapporteur on enlargement, who is also a Councillor in Csongrád-Csanád County in Hungary, said: "This year's Enlargement Day comes in the wake of historic decisions such as Ukraine, Moldova, Bosnia and Herzegovina all receiving EU candidate status. Likewise, the first ever EU-Albania and EU-North Macedonia Stabilisation and Association Councils took place in March, providing new momentum for the enlargement process. As EU's local and regional authorities, we affirm our commitment to a merit-based accession, which contributes to peace, democracy, prosperity, security and stability in Europe."
Ms Magyar pointed out that the EU must re-energise its enlargement process to retain geostrategic relevance and credibility in these turbulent times by setting a clear roadmap and timeline, providing more meaningful incentives to spur the necessary reforms. "We need to make the best use of peer-to-peer capacity-building instruments in order to help institutional development and capacity building in our partner countries, especially at the local level", she stated.
On 4 May, President of the Veneto Regional Council, Roberto Ciambetti co-chaired the Joint Consultative Committee Montenegro highlighting the importance of skills for the development of local communities in Montenegro. Mr Ciambetti championed skills as a means to ensure that young people do not have to migrate to other countries, and could "help combat the phenomenon of brain drain and negative demographic trends in the region".
In the Working Group on Ukraine Marshal Władysław Ortyl gave details of the most advanced pilot project between the Podkarpackie Region and Lviv Oblast on capacity building for better skills of Ukrainian local and regional administrations.
"We are about to kick off our structured training programmes for the local administrators from Ukraine. They will be offered an opportunity to work in the Podkarpackie Region's headquarters learning about every stage of implementation of the EU funds. The acquired know-how will serve Ukraine's future recovery" – underlined our First Vice President.