The Committee of National Coordinators (CNC) gathered for its traditional meeting in Vienna at the Austrian Federal Ministry of European and International Affairs on 30 March 2012.
The meeting was opened by the Political Director at the Austrian Ministry, Ambassador Jan Kickert, who recalled the establishment of the Organisation more than twenty years ago and that Austria was one of the founding fathers. In this context, he reiterated his country’s strong support to the Organisation, which was able to “reinvent itself over the years, thus become a leader of regional cooperation in Europe”. He also underlined that the comparative advantage of the CEI lied in the fact that, thanks to its adaptability to the changing conditions, it had succeeded in turning the diversity among its Member States into an added value. Moreover, it had created a sense of ownership of the various mechanisms of cooperation by each of its Member States, thus strengthening their cooperation and commitment to assist one another in coming closer to the EU.
The CNC then discussed a number of important issues such as the format of the new Plan of Action 2013-15, the revitalisation of the CEI Business Dimension, various possibilities for cooperation in the areas of energy and science and technology as well as the preparation of the Meeting of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, to be held in Trieste on 13 June 2012.
Finally, the CNC decided upon the financing of 9 small-scale projects with about 70,000 EUR out of the CEI Cooperation Fund, to which all Member States contribute according to an annual scale of agreed contributions. The next Call for Proposals for small scale projects, to be financed out of the CEI Cooperation Fund and implemented in 2013, will be launched in mid April 2012.
This was the second meeting of the Committee under the Ukrainian CEI Presidency. The next meeting will be held in London at the Headquarters of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) on 27 April 2012.
