The Innovation Fund Serbia, which is funded jointly by the EU and the Serbian government, has recently approved €9 million in grants for the implementation of 54 innovative projects. Innovative companies will use these grants to develop new, or improve existing, products, services, or technologies. As well as developing the technical aspects of their innovations, companies will grow their understanding of market trends and build relationships with potential partners and investors. The grants range from €80,000 to €300,000 in the form of so-called mini grants, matching grants and the collaborative grant scheme programme.
A total of 223 applications were submitted, and innovative projects for which funding has been approved come mostly from the field of software and ICT, mechanical engineering and energy applications. Most of the companies selected operate in Belgrade, Čačak and Novi Sad.
Since 2011, 153 innovative companies have been supported with €21.9 million through the pre-accession funds of the European Union. The call for applications for another €9 million of funding is now underway, with the deadline for submitting proposals for innovative projects on 15 March.
An EU-funded project supports network expansion and energy-efficient district heating in Pristina, Kosovo.
The Naim Frashëri primary and lower secondary school is one of the biggest in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo. The school has over 1,000 students and an area of around 5,000 square metres. Shqipe Vllasalija Mehmedi is the principal leading this huge organisation. One would expect that the major challenge she has experienced in her role would be linked to education but it turns out to be something quite different: “We had enormous problems during winter, and sometimes we had to miss classes because of problems related to the heating,” says Shqipe.
When she took over the school in 2018, the building was being heated by a central heating system fuelled by oil, which was delivered once a month. The delivery was organised for this and other schools by the municipal authorities. Shqipe explains that oil heating caused several problems including running out of fuel before the next delivery when temperatures were low, and serious harm to the environment around the school. “I remember back in 2018, teachers and students alike sitting with their coats on during classes, because there wasn’t enough heating,” says Shqipe.
“In an economic sense, Termokos has gained a lot since apart from reducing the losses in the network, it has gained 3,000 new customers, including public institutions such as two kindergartens, five schools, police stations, the Central University Hospital of Kosovo, and Kosovo’s National Theatre.”
Increased heating quality and better environment protection
The heating and pollution problem in Pristina is not unique to Naim Frashëri School. For their heating, most Pristina residents use coal, or electricity from the nearby Kosovo A and B power plants, though some use the much more efficient heating from the Termokos district heating. This is generated by the steam that comes through pipes from the power plant. However, a considerable number of private and public buildings in Pristina, including Naim Frashëri primary school, were not connected to the district heating as Termokos had issues with their old and insufficient distribution system.
To help address this issue, in 2019 the EU Office in Kosovo launched a project to renovate the district heating network in Pristina. The purpose of the project was to enable the connection of new private and public customers to the district heating system and improve the heating supply for existing consumers. As a result of the project, over two years, 120 old substations have been renovated, 50 new ones have been installed and over seven kilometres of underground pipes have been replaced by new preinsulated pipes, resulting in increased efficiency and a significant reduction of losses of heat and water.
Naim Bytyqi, director of the distribution department and project manager on behalf of Termokos, says that the project has been a huge success. “In an economic sense, Termokos has gained a lot since apart from reducing the losses in the network, it has gained over 3,000 new customers, including public institutions such as two kindergartens, five schools, police stations, the Central University Hospital of Kosovo, and Kosovo’s National Theatre.”
“We are very grateful to the European Union as with their support we now have high quality heating, and students and teachers alike can fully focus on education in a pleasant and warm environment.”
About the project
The Rehabilitation of the District Heating Network in Pristina project was finalised in April 2021 and was funded by the European Union under the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance programme.
Pleasant and warm environment in school
But what is also very important according to Bytyqi is the fact that these new customers no longer need to use fossil fuels for heating. “Prior to being connected to the district heating network, all the public institutions used oil as a source of heating. As well as dealing with huge financial costs due to high oil prices, these institutions had been a source of pollution, especially problematic given that they mainly operate in the city centre. “Residential consumers now connected to the Termokos network, also no longer use electricity for heating purposes. This has a positive effect on household economy, it decreases the demand for electricity consumption and it improves air quality,” concludes Bytyqi.
Now, following the completion of the project, the Naim Frashëri school has 24-hour heating covering the whole school space including classrooms, corridors, and toilets. As the principal says: “We are very grateful to the European Union as, with their support, we now have high quality heating, and students and teachers alike can fully focus on education in a pleasant and warm environment.”
The purpose of this analysis is to contribute to a better understanding of the socio-economic impact of the Covid-19 on Roma in the areas of education, employment, health, housing, and non-discrimination. The analysis evaluates the current situation of Roma and provides data for defining appropriate, tailor-made measures.
For 23 refugee and displaced families in the municipalities of Smederevska Palanka and Arilje, Serbia, the New Year 2022 holiday period was particularly memorable, as they received the keys to new Regional Housing Programme (RHP) homes after many years of insecure living conditions.
On 28 December, 15 families in Smederevska Palanka received new RHP apartments. The keys were handed over by Nikola Selaković, the Serbian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dirk Lorenz, Head of the Political Section at the Delegation of the European Union to Serbia, and Luisa Ginepro, Acting Head of the UNHCR Representation in Serbia, among others.
On 12 January, an event was held in Arilje to mark the delivery of keys to a further eight RHP refugee families. The keys were delivered by Nemanja Starović, State Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Vladimir Cucić, Serbian Commissioner for Refugees and Migration.
The construction of the apartments was funded by the RHP whose largest donor is the European Union, with other key donors being Germany, Italy, Norway, Switzerland and the United States of America. The land and infrastructure for the buildings were provided by the municipalities of Smederevska Palanka and Arilje.
The European Union is providing €1.5 million in incentive grants for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Serbia as an addition to the €10 million loan from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). The loan will be provided through OTP Leasing Srbija and aims to support the competitiveness of the country’s SMEs.
The financing is being provided under the EBRD’s SME Competitiveness Programme, through which local companies can access well-structured finance, including incentive grants worth up to 15% of their loan amount. The aim of the programme is to support Serbian SMEs in upgrading their businesses to EU standards in areas such as environmental protection, worker safety and product quality. Participating small businesses will also be offered technical assistance to help prepare and implement their investments. The grants and technical assistance are being financed by the EU through the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA) and in close coordination with Serbia’sMinistry of Economy.
Prime Minister Ana Brnabić and the European Union Ambassador to the Republic of Serbia Emanuele Giaufret have presented a new initiative worth €8 million to encourage “green” transformation of the economy and society in Serbia. The project titled “EU for the Green Agenda in Serbia – Get Started, Take Action, Scale Up“ will support Serbia to implement the Green Agenda for the Western Balkans.
Ambassador Giaufret noted that Serbia adopted the Green Agenda Declaration in October 2020 and committed to implementing it through the Regional Action Plan adopted in Brdo, Slovenia, in October 2021. “We will help Serbia improve strategies and policies, take concrete actions and increase investments for green transformation, especially in the areas of decarbonisation (reducing dependence on fossil fuels); reducing pollution of air, water and land; the circular economy; agriculture and food production, as well as biodiversity protection. This is great news and I am happy to be able to show our real commitment and engagement,” added Ambassador Giaufret.
This new two-year initiative from the EU and the United Nations Development Programme is being implemented in cooperation with the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) and the European Investment Bank. The initiative will help Serbia to achieve the Paris Agreement goals and will support the alignment of Serbia’s regulatory framework with the EU acquis (body of EU law) in all the areas of the Green Agenda for the Western Balkans.
The European Commission has completed EU Solidarity Fund (EUSF) assistance payments to 19 countries for a total amount of almost€385.5 million to tackle the coronavirus health emergency. This comes in addition to €132.7 million paid in 2020 to the Member States who requested an EUSF advance payment. 17 Member States had requested the EUSF support, as had Albania, Montenegro and Serbia as candidate countries.
Albania and Montenegro received their financial support at the end of 2021, while for Serbia the signature of the delegation agreement is ongoing, with the EUSF financial assistance expected to be paid out soon after the agreement is signed.
Commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement, Olivér Várhelyi, said, “Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have been standing by our partners in the Western Balkans. I am pleased that Albania, Montenegro and Serbia have been able to take advantage of the EUSF support. This is yet another demonstration of the EU’s commitment to supporting the region in the fight against the coronavirus, where possible with access to the same assistance mechanisms as for our Member States.”
EUSF COVID-19 health emergency support finances medical assistance, the purchase and administration of vaccines, personal protective equipment and medical devices, costs of healthcare, laboratory analyses, prevention measures, and monitoring and control of the spread of the disease.
An NGO from Sarajevo produces exciting works of art using waste bottle caps.
A beautiful carpet is on prominent display in the Sarajevo suburb of Ciglane. There’s something different about this so-called ‘Čepoćilim’ though: it is made of 25,000 plastic bottle tops. Its name translates as ‘cap carpet’ and it was designed and produced as part of a project by the Green Art Association, an NGO from Sarajevo, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Alma Hrasnica Dervišević, the President of the association, explains that it all started ten years ago when she came up with the idea of producing art using bottle tops as part of activities for the European Week for Waste Reduction in Sarajevo. “Back then this was a quite ambitious project for us, as we did not know if people would appreciate this initiative and what kind of feedback we would get,” says Alma.
The initial challenge was to collect bottle tops. Alma set up a bottle top collection point and contacted schools, companies and other institutions to ask if they would be willing to contribute to this project by collecting and delivering discarded plastic bottle tops. “To my surprise, the response was very positive and in a short time we managed to collect a considerable amount of bottle caps, and this is how the Čepoćilim trend started,” says Alma.
“Čepoćilim is the perfect combination of art, cultural heritage and ecology. The point of the project is to raise awareness of the accumulation of waste packaging and I believe that we have shown that there is a way to give this waste a new reuse value.”
Making one bottle top carpet a year
Following the success and appreciation of the first bottle top carpet, Alma and colleagues at the Green Art Association decided to turn this into an annual activity where they design and produce at least one carpet made of plastic bottle caps. For design, they decided to continue to use the traditional Bosnian carpet as this would be an artistic but also touristic attraction, contributing to the promotion of cultural heritage.
“Čepoćilim is the perfect combination of art, cultural heritage and ecology. The point of the project is to raise awareness of the accumulation of waste packaging and I believe that we have shown that there is a way to give this waste a new reuse value,” says Alma.
By involving young people, Alma believes that they managed to raise significant awareness among groups who can contribute to future environmental protection through waste reduction and management.
Recently, Green Art Association received support from the EU-funded ReLOaD (Regional Programme on Local Democracy) programme. The programme helped them in their latest project designing and producing benches from bottle tops, with a visual design drawing on traditional Bosnian carpets. In this latest activity they involved children from Vladislav Skarić primary school, Mjedenica school for children with learning difficulties and Bjelave orphanage. As part of the project, they conducted 30 eco-art workshops on turning waste into eco-art. In these workshops they used materials such as plastic bottles and tins. In their final project, they used around 15,000 bottle tops to produce the benches.
“Thanks to this project we were able to involve more children and young people in our activity and raise awareness among them about ecological issues and for this we are very grateful to the ReLOaD programme and the EU.”
About the programme
The Regional Programme for Local Democracy in the Western Balkans (ReLOaD) is funded by the European Union and implemented by the United National Development Programme. ReLOaD is now in its second phase, lasting until 2024.
The project created an environment in which children and young people were able both to develop cultural initiatives that were ecological and to socialise through artistic activities. “Thanks to this project we were able to involve more children and young people in our activity and raise awareness among them about ecological issues and for this we are very grateful to the ReLOaD programme and EU,” says Alma.
The bottle top bench is now in the very centre of Sarajevo in Gimnazijska Street, surrounded by primary and high schools. For Alma it is a source of pride and all the children who worked on it, as well as their classmates, can see it every day and be reminded of the importance of waste reduction and management.
Novi Sad has officially become one of the three European Capitals of Culture for 2022, along with Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg and Kaunas, Lithuania. It is the first time a city from Serbia has been given this title.
“Novi Sad is of great importance both for Serbian national identity and for Europe,” said the Ambassador of the European Union to Serbia, Emanuele Giaufret, at the proclamation ceremony, which was held at the Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad on 13 January.
The year of the European Capital of Culture officially began at the symbolic time of 20.22 with an event titled “Zeniteum :: 2022” directed by Dragan Živadinov. The celebration focused on the great names of Serbian science through art, Mileva Marić Einstein and Milutin Milanković. The opening night was also marked by a large exhibition on “Time and Universe” in the hall of Studio M, as well as concerts at several locations in the city.
Novi Sad will present itself as a 2022 European Capital of Culture with more than 1,500 cultural events and 4,000 local, national and international artists in a total of eight programme areas. Within these, more than 1,700 European and world artists from over 45 countries will tell the story of the city known as the Serbian Athens, through the perspective of common European values, but also shared challenges.
The programme narrative of the “Novi Sad – European Capital of Culture” project stems from the slogan “For new bridges,” and the idea of building new bridges of cooperation and exchange between artists and organisations from Novi Sad and Serbia with the wider European cultural scene.
2022 has been designated the European Year of Youth. This means increasing efforts to include youth priorities and concerns in relevant EU policy areas and at every level of EU decision making with the aim of re-establishing a positive outlook for young people, who have been hard hit by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Activities that will be organised as part of this year include conferences, initiatives promoting youth participation in policymaking, awareness-raising campaigns on a more inclusive, green and digital EU, and studies and research on the situation in which young people find themselves. The European Year of Youth goes hand in hand with NextGenerationEU, which reopens perspectives for young people, including quality jobs and education and training opportunities for the Europe of the future, and supports young people’s participation in society.
The Year of Youth will seek synergies and complementarity with other EU programmes targeting youth across the policy spectrum – from rural development programmes focused on young farmers to research and innovation programmes, and from cohesion to climate change actions – including EU programmes with international outreach or of a transnational nature.
Besides Erasmus+ and the European Solidarity Corps, with budgets for the current financial period of €28 billion and 1€ billion respectively, the EU’s Youth Guarantee and Youth Employment Initiative are creating more opportunities for young people. Meanwhile, a new programme called ALMA will also be launched in 2022 to support cross-border professional mobility for disadvantaged young people.
The full programme of activities and further information will be available on the Youth Portal. The scope of activities will cover issues that mostly affect young people, following the priorities highlighted in the Youth Goals, such as equality and inclusion, sustainability, mental health and well-being, and quality employment. They will also involve young people beyond the EU.
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