10th meeting of Steering Board of EUSAIR held

The 10th meeting of the Steering Board of the EU Strategy for the Adriatic-Ionian Region (EUSAIR) was held in Belgrade on October 21/22. The meeting was attended by Director General for the European Union at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and EUSAIR National Coordinator Jelena Burzan and Deputy Chief Negotiator - National IPA Coordinator and EUSAIR National Coordinator for EU Funds at the Office for European Integration Ivana Glišević Đurović.

The meeting of the EUSAIR Steering Board is one of the first activities under the Serbian EUSAIR Chairmanship. During this meeting, the programme and priorities of the Presidency were presented, as well as the upcoming commitments and activities.

The national coordinators of eight EUSAIR participating countries supported the launch of a procedure for the formal inclusion of Northern Macedonia in EUSAIR structures. National Coordinators for EU funds have defined the final phase and steps necessary to adopt a list of macro-regional priorities to be proposed to the European Commission for inclusion in the most important programming documents for the period 2021-2027.

Glišević Đurović said that the continued support of the European Commission`s Directorate-General for Neighborhood Policy and Negotiations on Enlargement (DG NEAR) is expected at the current and most important stage for adopting and prioritising the Adriatic-Ionian region.

“The involvement of the relevant DG NEAR units in the overall process of finalisation of the macro-regional priorities and incorporating them into priorities to be supported under IPA III (2021-2027) is of great importance for this process. In this way, we can ensure the complementarity of macro-regional priorities with the priorities of the national programmes and projects of IPA III”, Glišević Đurović concluded.