In order to use the opportunity of having all relevant stakeholders from the EC and the Region present in Brussels for the Specialist Meeting on IPA CBC in the Western Balkans, in agreement with the European Commission, CBIB also organised the 11th regional CBC coordination meeting, the third one taking place this year.

This meeting was the opportunity to present the work done by CBIB on completing the Assessment of the First Calls for Proposals for 8 ongoing IPA CBC programmes among Western Balkan countries. The first part of the Assessment, focusing on the process of Call preparation and launching, duration of various steps and phases and interactions among actors, was presented on the 3rd Regional CBC Forum in Tirana in January. The second part of the Assessment was aimed at identifying main problems, bottlenecks and lessons learned from the first CfPs and providing a regional overview of the interest expressed, as well as the quality of the project proposals submitted and selected.

All beneficiary countries presented the updates on the IPA CBC programmes their countries are participating in, giving information on the progress of contracting of projects selected under the first Calls and their plans for the launching of the second Calls.

An overview of the evaluation report prepared by the team of EC Evaluators that will feed into the programme revision planned for 2011 was also presented to the participants of the meeting. The Evaluators will conduct the second part of the evaluation at the beginning of next year and this would conclude their input for the programme revision.

Further harmonisation of processes and procedures was discussed as well as plans for the next EUD Technical Work Group meeting to finalise agreements on open issues regarding project implementation, monitoring and reporting. In addition, upon the initiative of the beneficiaries, the organisation of a regional meeting that would cover the topic of decentralised implementation system and necessary requirements was agreed upon.