The European Commission has allocated almost €12 million to Serbia in additional financial support to help in the fight against Covid-19. These funds will be used for emergency support to the population, measures for prevention, monitoring and control of the spread of the disease, and for medical and personal protective equipment. The funds will also serve to reimburse expenses incurred previously by Serbia in the fight against the pandemic.
The donation comes from the European Solidarity Fund (EUSF). It is part of a larger package of €530 million to cover 17 EU member states and three EU candidate countries. The financial contribution proposed by the Commission has now to be approved by the European Parliament and the Council. The financial aid will then be disbursed to the applicant countries.
The EU Solidarity Fund is available to EU member states, but also to EU candidate countries, such as Serbia. It can be activated in cases of major natural disasters or public health emergencies that cause great direct damage or require the containment of significant public financial expenditures. Serbia has benefited from the EU Solidarity Fund in the past, after the 2014 floods.
The EU is by far the largest investor, the largest trading partner and the largest donor to Serbia. With more than €3 billion in non-refundable aid to Serbia in the past two decades, the EU supports Serbia to become a more prosperous, sustainable, fairer, safer, democratic society, and thus ready to join the Union.
On 11 March, the European Commission put forward a package of almost €530 million in additional financial support under the EU Solidarity Fund (EUSF). It will contribute to efforts deployed by 17 EU Member States, and three accession countries (Albania, Montenegro and Serbia) to safeguard public health in fighting the pandemic.
This funding will support part of their public expenditure on medical and personal protective equipment, emergency support to the population, and prevention, monitoring and control measures.
EU Commissioner for Cohesion and Reforms, Elisa Ferreira said: “The EU Solidarity Fund is a concrete demonstration of European solidarity in action. Since its creation, it has delivered effective assistance and relief to millions of people during difficult times. Last year, we extended its scope to cover major health emergencies. Now we are proposing to mobilise much needed coronavirus-related financial assistance. The EUSF is once again accomplishing its core mission.”
Next steps
The financial contribution proposed by the Commission has now to be approved by the European Parliament and the Council. The financial aid will then be disbursed to the applicant countries.
On 10 March, the Mother Teresa University Hospital in Tirana received a CT (computed tomography) scanner, as part of the EU’s €4.2 million emergency support programme, EU4Health. The CT scanner will be crucial in both the prevention and the fight against COVID 19, serving to both investigate conditions of COVID-19 hospitalised patients and supporting laboratory diagnostics and testing.
EU Ambassador to Albania, Luigi Soreca, and Albanian Minister of Health and Social Protection, Ogerta Manastirliu, were present at the delivery of this advanced equipment to the hospital’s radiology department. During his address, Ambassador Soreca expressed his appreciation to all the doctors and nurses of the four COVID-19 structures in Tirana, Durres, Shkodra and Elbasan, as well as to the epidemiologists, biologists and researchers of the Institute of Public Health for their hard work in this fight against the pandemic outbreak:
“I am proud that the EU can be at your side. These are very difficult times in all countries of the world, and certainly in the EU. Even in these difficult times, the EU and its Member States have kept their commitment and support to Albania, and this delivery is the concrete example of this strong bond. While this one contract ends today, the EU continues to be at the side of Albania with other crucial interventions against the pandemic, including on vaccines.”
Since its launch in April 2020, the €4.2 million EU4Health programme, implemented by the United Nations Office for Projects and Services (UNOPS), has ensured the procurement of specialised medical equipment and devices for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 for Albanian hospitals.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has extended a €10 million mortgage credit line toIntesa Sanpaolo Banka d.d. Bosnia and Herzegovinafor further lending to private borrowers for housing purposes. The new credit line is aimed to address the growing demand for mortgages in the BiH and is an extension of a €15 million mortgage line approved in July 2019.
With this support from the EBRD, customers of the bank will be able to get more favourable loans to improve housing conditions, achieve better energy efficiency, and purchase a property.
Since 1996, the EBRD has invested more than €2.7 billion in 191 projects in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The tender for the construction of the new gas supply pipeline connecting the city of Niš with the Bulgarian capital Sofia Construction has been published. The gas pipeline’s projected capacity will allow for the transfer of 1.8 billion cubic metres of natural gas annually. The construction of the gas pipeline on the Serbian side will be funded with the support of the European Union with over € 49 million. In addition, the project will be financed through a loan of the European Investment Bank (EIB), the bank of the EU, with € 25 million.
This project will significantly increase the amount of gas supply to households, thus considerably contributing to Serbia’s energy security and cleaner environment.
The photo exhibition “Natura 2000 in frame” with pictures of protected species in Serbia is open on the Sava Promenade at the Kalemegdan Fortress in Belgrade. Art lovers who may visit the exhibition will have an opportunity to enjoy three winning and 31 semifinalist photos that competed in the “Natura 2000 in the Frame” competition.
The purpose of the exhibition aims to promote biodiversity and beautiful landscapes in Serbia and raise public awareness of the importance of nature conservation, diversity of flora and fauna.
Photo contest ”Natura 2000 in the frame” is organised by the EU-funded “EU for Natura 2000 in Serbia” project. Out of more than 1,500 received photographs, 34 were selected and will be displayed at anoutdoor photo exhibition at Kalemegdan Fortress during March and April 2021.
Meet Donika, a visual artist from Tirana who is preserving the memory of an old house and its defiant owner who refused to give in to the relentless tide of urban development.
Myslym Shyri is one of the busiest streets in Tirana, the capital of Albania. For decades, it was a quiet, residential neighbourhood with no shops or coffee bars. This changed after the fall of communism in the 1990s, when almost all houses and apartments turned their ground floors into commercial ventures. All except one.
This is an apartment building like many others, but on this ground floor, no shop or café has taken over. Many people pass by every day, and one of the commuters who passed the building regularly was Donika Çina, a visual artist living in Tirana. She was inspired to incorporate the apartment into her performance art.
“There were and are so many rumours about Bia: her life, her intentions and her mental state. Her decision to never sell or rent her home for commercial purposes seems significant.”
The memory lives on
Donika was particularly interested by an old lady, the owner, who regularly cleaned and painted the exterior of her ground floor flat. The lady’s name was Bia. “There were and are so many rumours about Bia: her life, her intentions and her mental state. Her decision to never sell or rent her home for commercial purposes, as many others have done on Myslym Shyri Street, seemed significant,” Donika says.
In 2017, when Donika started work on her performance, she found out that Bia had passed away. The house was still there, but she was not sure for how long it would remain. “I needed to take action,” she says, “to keep the memory alive, before the house was turned into another coffee shop.”
As part of her performance, Donika repeated Bia’s daily cleaning rituals in front of the house. The performance was recorded by three security cameras and live-streamed on a monitor at the Zeta gallery exhibition space in Tirana.
Her performance aimed to reflect on questions related to Bia’s daily ritual of cleaning in front of the house: was Bia fighting the city’s perceived neglect as an act of protest? Did she consider the space in front of her house to be an extension of her private space? “We cannot ask her these questions. But we can continue questioning our involvement in public space; the meaning of our conscious actions; the impact on us of our walls, concrete and trees all being whitewashed,” says Donika.
“The performance will preserve the cultural memory of the city and Bia’s gesture as a fragile but significant individual protest.”
About the project
These residencies are conceived within the long-term project, Beyond Matter, which is an international, collaborative, practice-based research project that takes cultural heritage and culture to the verge of virtual reality. One of the goals of the project is to develop novel solutions for the accessible digital documentation and networked presentation of exhibitions that currently exist, or previously existed, in physical space – including artworks, artifacts, and educational materials. The project is supported through the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.
Standing her ground
The exterior of Bia’s house is still intact, even now, five years after she passed away. However, it needs some additional work in order to look as it did when Bia was alive. Recently, Donika took the initiative to build on her artistic project, by working on the exterior of the flat, and video recording the exterior in 3D, before the flat is turned into a business, like other ground floor flats in the neighbourhood.
For the follow-up work on her project, Donika applied for support from an EU-funded artist residency in Tirana. “The performance will preserve the cultural memory of the city and Bia’s gesture as a fragile but significant individual protest,” says Donika.
The call for residency was launched by Tirana Art Lab – Center for Contemporary Art, Tallinn Art Hall and the ZKM I Centre for Art and Media, inviting European art practitioners or theoreticians to apply for one of the three production residencies taking place in Karlsruhe, Tallinn, and Tirana.
Tech Boost is a regional initiative driven by the Entrepreneurship Academy of the European Fund for Southeast Europe (EFSE) to support Western Balkan startups in tech. The initiative concluded the second cycle of its programme in March 2021. During the cycle, the programme sent participants to high-profile international competitions, where two women-led technology startups were awarded a prize.
Tech Boost aims to tap the Western Balkan region’s innovative potential by connecting startup accelerators from Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Serbia onto one platform. By connecting organisations from these countries, Tech Boost endeavours to build their capacities to develop local entrepreneurs. Conceived and funded by the EFSE Entrepreneurship Academy, the initiative is being implemented together with Europe’s leading B2B accelerator, Startup Wise Guys.
The European Fund for Southeast Europe is a public-private partnership that is supported with funds from various private investors and donor agencies, including the European governments and the European Union.
The European Commission and UN Women, joined by over 60 representatives from governments and civil society organisations, launched today a new component within the EU-funded UN Women regional programme “Ending violence against women in the Western Balkans and Turkey: Implementing Norms, Changing Minds”. The purpose of the programme is to accelerate and strengthen the response to the surge in violence against women and girls amidst the pandemic in the Western Balkans.
The additional funding to Phase II of the programme, which kicked off in March 2020, will address the gaps exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic in the area of general and specialist service provision for women and girls, such as shelters, legal aid and psychological counselling, as well as improving the effectiveness of support services in crisis situations.
Since the COVID-19 outbreak, the European Union and UN Women have collaborated with women’s rights organisations across the Western Balkans and Turkey and have kicked off 40 new partnerships to address the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the provision of specialist services for women survivors of violence.
Elite Travel Group, in association with Regional Cooperation Council (RCC) Triple P – Tourism Development and Promotion Project – have initiated a series of free webinars for travel agents and tourism boards from the Western Balkans to help the tourism industry prepare and adapt to new market realities.
The first webinar brought together participants from all over Western Balkans, and provided detailed information and training on trends and developments, niche market segments and developing the right products, as well as on issues around sustainability and health and safety in the post-Covid era.
The Triple P Tourism Project is funded by the European Union.
We use cookies and similar technologies to improve your experience on our website.
Read our Privacy Policy.
