Attracting Cities from Central and Eastern Europe

1. Attracting Cities from Central and Eastern Europe Wioletta Szymanska The Regional Environmental Center (REC) Urban Transport Benchmarking Initiative (UTBI) sponsored by the European Commission´s Directorate General for Transport and Energy (DG TREN)

2. Content of the presentation • International Visegrad Fund – opportunity for cities from Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) to get involved in the initiative; • Difficulties facing cities in CEEC’s preventing their participation in the project; • Benchmarking website: www.transportbenchmarks.org - opportunities for stakeholders and people not involved in the initiative to learn from the website.

3. International Visegrad Fund (1) • Established by governments of countries of Visegrad Four (the Czech Republic, the Republic of Hungary, the Republic of Poland, and the Slovak Republic) in 1999 with its Secretariat in Bratislava with total contribution of 3 000 000 EUR; • The purpose - to promote development of closer cooperation between the V4 countries through supporting common cultural, scientific and educational projects, exchanges between young people, cross-border cooperation and tourism promotion; • Countries eligible: V4 countries and non-V4 countries, with projects thematically related to Visegrad cooperation

4. International Visegrad Fund (2) • Small Grants - for the project period of maximum 6 months and with maximum amount of 4.000 EUR • Standard Grants - for the project period of maximum 12 months and with minimum amount of 4.001 EUR • Strategic Grants - for the project period of 12-36 months and with amount of around 40.000 -100.000 EUR and • Local and regional public transport as sustainable development precondition in V4 countries - one of the 5priorities for Strategic Grants • The financial contribution of the Fund – up to 50% of the total project costs including own in kind contribution of applicant or other co-financing subjects

5. International Visegrad Fund (3) • Standard grants - Deadlines for applications are March 15 and September 15; • Small grants - Deadlines for applications are March 1, June 1, September 1 and December 1; • Strategic grants – deadline for applications 31 January; • More information available in the Secretariat of International Visegrad FundDrotárska cesta 46811 02 Bratislava, Slovak RepublicTel: 00421-2-6720 7111, Fax: 00421-2-5935 4180Email: visegradfund@visegradfund.org, www.visegradfund.org

6. Barriers to CEEC cities’ involvement • Lack of funding to attend project’s workshops and study visits; • Lack of human resources capacity for data collection, cities are preoccupied with their duties; • Lack of sufficient knowledge of English in some of municipalities and stakeholders.

7. www.transportbenchmarks.org (1) Project’s website very useful for persons/organisations not involved in the project, particularly: • working groups results – reports (working groups section) and summary of site visits (events section) for the previous 2 years

10. www.transportbenchmarks.org (2) • benchmarking tool (publications and results section)- developed in order to enable instantaneous graphical comparisons to be made between the indicator data collected by the cities participating in the UTBI. Data for other cities can be entered in order to benchmark their city’s urban transport characteristics against those in the cities involved in the initiative.

13. REC’s contact details • The Regional Environmental Center for CEE, Ady Endre ut 9-11, 2000 Szentendre, Hungary, Tel. (+36-26) 504-000, Fax: (+36-26) 311-294, www.rec.org • Wioletta Szymanska, project manager, e-mail: WSzymanska@rec.org and Vadim Ostapenko, webmaster, e-mail: vadim@rec.org