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Author: WeBalkans

EU marks Climate Diplomacy week in Montengro with tree planting

Written by WeBalkans on . Posted in News.

The Delegation of the European Union in Montenegro, in cooperation with the EU Info Centre, the Municipality of Nikšić and the local NGO sector, organised tree-planting in Trebjesa to mark the Week of Climate Diplomacy.

 

“We are symbolically taking ‘action,’ which along with ‘ambition’ is the central theme for EU climate diplomacy in 2021. Both ambition and action are what the EU wants to showcase with its Green Deal, its Climate Law and the latest set of policy proposals – the goal is to achieve at least 55% emission reduction by 2030 as an intermediate step towards the EU’s climate neutrality target by 2050,” said EU Ambassador to Montenegro, Oana Cristina Popa, during the planting.

 

Ambassador Popa planted the first seedlings, together with the President of the Municipality of Nikšić, Marko Kovačević, and representatives of the local NGO sector. Over 100 participants gathered to plant fir, cedar and birch seedlings, provided by the EU Info Centre in an area which was recently affected by forest fires.

 

Popa noted that in the last 13 years the EU has donated more than €40 million to help Montenegro to protect its environment. In Nikšić, Popa learned about the impact that this support has had – for example, a representative of the NGO FORS Montenegro said that his organisation is implementing an EU project procuring underground waste containers and a modern waste collection vehicle.

EU and Germany support improvement of student dormitories in Albania

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In Tirana’s student city – a student campus area in south-east Tirana – 19 dormitories will undergo energy-efficiency renovation based on structural energy audits, and at least three new buildings will be built. The project is part of the Student City I Masterplan and has been made possible thanks to a €4.78 million grant from the European Union through the Western Balkans Investment Facility (WBIF) and €21 million provided by the German Federal Government through the KfW Development Bank. The agreement for this investment was signed on 3 November by the Minister of Finance and Economy of Albania, Delina Ibrahimaj, and the Director of the KfW Office in Tirana, Brit Horschke.

 

The WBIF is an EU-led donor investment platform that pools grants with implementing partner financing to support EU enlargement and socio-economic development in the region. It was launched in December 2009 with the purpose of delivering finance and technical assistance for strategic investments.

EU and Council of Europe launch “Block the Hatred. Share the Love” campaign

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The European Union and the Council of Europe have launched a joint campaign -“Block the Hatred. Share the Love!” in Kosovo. The campaign aims to inform and educate society, especially youth, about the role that everyone has in the fight against forms of hate speech targeting groups and individuals in our local communities. This movement kicked off regionally last December and is now being launched in each of the Western Balkan partners, starting in Prishtina/ Pristina.

 

The campaign will be extended online through dedicated social media channels, but also in radio and TV appearances, public activities and social initiatives involving prominent public figures as No Hate Speech ambassadors, institutions and activists. They will share personal stories and testimonies and exchange good practice related to the promotion of diversity and equality in the region. The No Hate Speech Ambassadors include prominent public figures such as Bajram Kinolli, Rinor Gashi, Uta Ibrahimi and Amina Kaja, who is a Young European Ambassador (YEA) from Kosovo, all actively engaged with counter-narratives and behaviours.

 

The campaign is supported by the “Promotion of diversity and equality” initiative implemented within the joint European Union and Council of Europe “Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Turkey 2019-2022” programme.

Europe is Here 2.0: EU Delegation to Albania launches new campaign

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The Delegation of the European Union to Albania launched a new communication campaign on EU support to Albania. Building on last year’s Europe Is Here campaign, this new wave will inform citizens about the EU’s financial assistance to Albania, especially in key sectors such as education, health, innovation, agriculture and culture.   

 

Dedicated to the EU’s contribution to the education sector in Albania, the launch event of the Europe Is Here 2.0 campaign took place at the Polytechnic University of Tirana, UPT, in the presence of EU Ambassador Luigi Soreca.

 

In his remarks, Ambassador Soreca said: “Investing in young people is key to taking Albania forward on its EU path. This year we chose to start our ‘Europe Is Here’ awareness-raising campaign with education because of the importance the EU attaches to this key sector and the substantial funding it provides to Albania through programmes for education and youth. “’Europe Is Here’ because we want to continue our conversations with you on how the EU is helping Albania to get closer to the European Union, improving the life of Albanians every day while providing wide opportunities to Albanian youth: to be engaged, to be connected, to be empowered.” 

 

In addition to the well-knownErasmus+ exchange programme, the European Union has invested over €100 million in education in Albania over the last ten years, mostly in vocational education and training and inclusive education as well as the renovation and reconstruction of educational facilities.

The Regional Housing Programme hands over 55 new homes in Serbia

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Thirty-five contracts for purchased apartments have been delivered to refugee families from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia who live in the Belgrade area in Serbia. The event to mark this achievement was attended by Nikola Selaković, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Serbia, and Emanuele Giaufret, Ambassador and Head of Delegation of the European Union to Serbia, among others.

 

The Minister of Foreign Affairs highlighted that to date more than 6,000 families from the former Yugoslavia have received homes thanks to the Regional Housing Programme (RHP) in Serbia.

 

Ambassador Giaufret stated that the RHP showed how successful regional cooperation can be, stressing the EU’s intention to support the RHP until the end. He also recognised the strong commitment of the Serbian government to providing permanent solutions to all families involved in the RHP, despite all the challenges imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. He concluded by saying that from all the projects the EU has funded in Serbia, the ones that bring the greatest joy are those focused on people – their rights, their dignity and their happiness. Respect for human dignity and human rights, as well as equality and freedom, are among the European Union’s fundamental values.

 

Almost €291 million has been allocated so far to the Regional Housing Programme. With €235 million, the European Union is the main donor to the Programme.

Regional news editors meet to discuss restoring trust in media

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Editors and representatives of media civil society organisations (CSOs) from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey met in Njivice, Montenegro on 13-16 October to discuss the role of editors in restoring media trust. The meeting, organised within the EU-funded ‘Resilience’ project, provided a platform for media professionals to exchange experiences on sustaining media operations that promote high-quality journalism. Constructive journalism, cross-border collaboration, countering the spread of online disinformation, and hate speech were among the topics discussed.

 

Stefan Janjić, the editor-in-chief at Fake News Tragač from Serbia explained that the process of countering disinformation in his country usually required countering hate speech as well. “Based on our archive, 42% of false content contains some kind of hate speech or toxic narrative. Most often this is about neighbouring nations – the absolute champions are Albanians, then Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina – and we also have migrants and the LGBT+ population,” explained Janjić. During the Editors’ Forum participants watched three documentaries about the role of the media in shaping our reality: Patka, Collective and Junk Folder.

 

The regional programme ‘Resilience: Civil society action to reaffirm media freedom and counter disinformation and hateful propaganda in the Western Balkans and Turkey’ is implemented with the support of the European Union.

BIRN publishes oral history videos with war survivors’ stories

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Student videos documenting the experiences of the generation that lived through the wars of the 1990s are being published online. This is part of a Balkan investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) programme intended to nurture oral history through storytelling that illuminates transitional justice issues. Twenty videos in which war survivors tell their personal stories have been posted on YouTube for public viewing. They were produced by students as part of a BIRN mentoring scheme entitled Youth Memory Transfer.

 

The videos are the result of a training and mentoring programme that included an interactive workshop at which young participants from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia examined truth-seeking, fact-checking and transitional justice reporting as an exercise in storytelling. As a part of the workshop, the students conducted independent research related to each survivor’s history in their local community in order to gain deeper background knowledge of subjects’ personal stories.

 

The programme gave the students a better understanding of the history of the break-up of Yugoslavia, by documenting the stories of people who lived through it. Through the videos published online it also provides the public with insights into the experiences of the generation that lived through the wars of the 1990s. The videos were produced with the support of the Regional Youth Cooperation Office (RYCO) and the European Union.

EU launches a project for equal access to education in Serbia

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The EU in Serbia has launched a project focusing on equal access to and completion of pre-university education for children in need of additional support in education. The project, worth €4.7 million, will support inclusive education through further development of the legal framework, training of education professionals, enhancing the quality of learning, and additional support to children and teachers in mainstream schools.  
It will do this by developing an enabling environment and procuring equipment to facilitate learning, reaching about 1,000 children in need of additional support in education. The project aims to have a direct impact on the further development and improvement of inclusive education by reaching a minimum of 10% of Serbia’s schools and strengthening the skills of 4,000 professionals in education and other areas, as well as about 1,000 professionals in inter-sectoral committees.   
Planned activities include supporting the development of professional learning communities and mentoring support to education professionals through model schools for inclusive education, the work of specialist advisers, and the operation of 20 inclusive education networks in participating municipalities. The project will also contribute to the establishment of three resource centres and the procurement of assistive technologies to support students with disabilities, and will support the activities of the National Coalition for Inclusive Education.

BIRN Albania trains students and young journalists on mobile journalism

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The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) in Albania organised a two-day training course in Tirana this month on mobile journalism (MOJO). Seventeen young journalists and journalism students participated in the workshop delivered by Norbert Šinković, an experienced trainer on multimedia and mobile journalism. The training provided the students with the core techniques of reporting and storytelling on mobile, web and other online platforms.

 

The trainees learned how to create quality journalism content using mobile devices, with skills training for producing high-quality photos and video, audio, and editing for social media, web, and other platforms. The intensive course was designed to provide young journalists with the key skills of journalism using mobile phones.

 

This activity is organised as part of the Using Big Data and Multimedia to Boost Quality and Independent Journalism in Albania project co-funded by the European Union and Swedish government and implemented by BIRN.

EU supports development of broadband infrastructure in Montenegro

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The European Union is supporting the development of broadband infrastructure in Montenegro through a €550,000 technical assistance project. This aims to improve the country’s coverage by improving infrastructure for fixed internet. The project began in July last year, with initial steps including an assessment of the existing situation and an investigation of telecom operator infrastructure plans for the next three years.

 

The results of the study were presented at the ‘Deployment of Next Generation Networks in Montenegro’ workshop held in Podgorica on 29 September. The purpose of the workshop was to inform stakeholders including as telecom operators, municipalities, and utility companies, and gather views and input in order to enable the effective deployment of Next Generation Networks in the coming years.

 

The project is funded by the European Union through the Western Balkans Investment Framework (WBIF), in cooperation with the European Investment Bank. The lead international financing institution and potential lender for the implementation of the project is the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.