11/11/2014 ACROSSEE Workshop in EU parliament on streamlining transport connections in Western Balkans, in Brussels, Belgium

On 11 November 2014, a workshop in the framework of the ACROSSEE project was organised at the EU Parliament. The event - under the title “Streamlining transport connections in the Western Balkans (Removing bottlenecks, improving regional cohesion)” - was organised by the Central European Initiative, Project Lead Partner, with the aim to present the ACROSSEE main results in view of improving transport connections in South East Europe. Presentations were delivered by Alain Baron, European Commission DG Move; Andreas Zimmer, UNECE; Mate Gjorgjievski, SEETO, and by Vicente Rodrigues Saez, European Commission, DG Regio. The speakers underlined the importance of soft measures, such as improvement of administrative procedures at the border-crossings suggested by the ACROSSEE project as the most efficient action for improving transport connections. Baron stated that the real problem not the infrastructure but the way in which it was used. Infrastructure improvements in fact require consistent investments and time, but soft measures can make a change with small economic efforts. Saez congratulated the ACROSSEE project on the results obtained through the transnational cooperation programme and suggested strong capitalisation on the results produced also in the next programming period. The agenda of the workshop can be downloaded from this link: https://www.acrossee.net/images/ACROSSEE_BXL_Agenda_20141029.pdf. For more information, please visit the project’s official web site at: www.acrossee.net.