TEMPUS Joint European Project
Balkan Agri-Sector Initiative for Capacity Building

• Project
• Background
• Consortium
• Summary
• Members Area
• Expert Database
• Module Contents
• Publication
  Western Balkan Agriculture and European Integration

Final Conference (June, 2nd to 3rd 2008)

"Benefits of Balkan agricultural cross-border cooperation in the light of the EU integration process"

Venue: Struga, FYR of Macedonia
Date: 02nd – 03rd June 2008

Fotogallery

Project Description

The main project idea is to support the upgrading, development and share of scarce expertise in EU-integration issues within the agribusiness institutions on country as well as on regional level in order to contribute to the sector’s development, economical and political stability and to a faster integration of the region into the EU and international markets.

Therefore, the first specific project objective is to introduce a novel form of institutional collaboration among the countries and within each country by creating a regional umbrella initiative called Inter-Country Knowledge-Based Platform (further abbreviated Platform).

This Platform will be constituted by 2 representatives of each national consortium partner and the national platform offices (NPO) located at the partner universities in Sarajevo, Tirana, Skopje and Novi Sad. The national platform offices (NPO) act as administrative bodies of the national consortia which consist of the local Faculties of Agriculture (as leading institution) and 2-4 other sectoral institutions in order to build up a manageable project consortium. In order to be able to initiate, facilitate and organize an efficient partnership of sectoral institutions the Platfom will stay open for other sector stakeholders.

The platform will act as a link between the governments’ structures (ministries and executive agencies), VET, civil society institutions and further stakeholders. As a part of a Life-Long Learning (LLL) concept of each partner country, the Platform will be led and coordinated by the partner universities and used for collecting, developing and disseminating knowledge, information and skills. It will be established at the first meeting of the national representatives.

The national platform offices, located at the partner university, will be equipped with a info-resource centre consisting of a library (periodicals and reference books purchased by the project, teaching materials for 8 modules, student seminar works, case studies) and a computer cluster of 5 PCs with permanent internet connection, one printer, one mobile presentation set (1 laptop + LCD projector), a package of management information software and decision support software, regional experts’ data-base. The host universities will provide adequate space and surrounding IT infrastructure including a permanent internet connection.

The NPO will be managed by the project officers (4 in total).

The main tasks of the Platform, implemented through its NPOs at the partner universities will be:

• To strengthen the institutions which are member of the national consortium by implementing nine modules to train trainers for each institution and to open up an informed dialogue between agribusiness sector stakeholders about its development and integration into the EU.
• To support cross-border cooperation by organizing 3 annual conferences where representatives of all consortium institutions will meet and exchange opinion, lessons learned and establish personal connections as a fundament for closer future collaboration. The last of them will be the final project conference to which EU experts will be invited.
• To provide resources to enable the sharing of expertise, the information flow, on-line discussions, collaboration and learning in the premises of the info-resource centre.
• To support the preparation of teaching materials for each course and workshop by providing technical support – invitations, posters, translations, printing, publishing on the web.
• To support the preparation and presentation of seminars prepared by training participants.
• To organize the evaluation form for each course and to report about the evaluation results.
• To do the day-to-day management of platform work and project.

The core of the platform activities will be upgrading the knowledge and skills of professionals working for the institutions within the CC.

The eight modules selected could be grouped into two major groups:

• one offering a deeper understanding of the EU’s structure, agricultural policies, legislations, structural funds and requirements that have to be fulfilled by accession countries (EU Agricultural policy, EU structural funds, International trade, Food quality and safety), and
• one oriented towards providing skills necessary to improve the ability of institutions to manage and lead the development as well as the sector reform (HR management, Project management, Information management, Participation in the policy cycle - creation, implementation, monitoring and improvement).

The process of the module preparation will start with the assignment of 2 coordinators for each module (one from the EU and one from the partner institution). The partner coordinator will visit the EU-based university in order to upgrade his/her knowledge and work together with the EU module coordinator. This team will develop a precise module structure, prepare written teaching material in English and the national language (NPO will provide support) and deliver an intensive course of one week (25 to 30 teaching hours). The target group in the partner countries will be middle managers and civil servants as well as experts working in executive agencies. Each modul will be delivered to Joint Working Groups consisting of trainees from all 4 partner countries . In total 32 experts per country will be trained. During the course of the project implementation 128 experts from the region will improve their performance. For each module some reference literature will be purchased as well. The training participants will prepare seminar works to prove their acquired knowledge. The general course objective is to "produce" trainers – people who can spread their acquired knowledge within the institution to achieve a domino effect (introduction of issue to wide audience). Therefore the quality and the recognition of the courses has to be ensured. For each training material prepared 2 peer-reviewers will be assigned (one from the EU, one from the partner country) and each teacher will be evaluated by the participants. In order to facilitate the courses’ recognition diplomas and diploma supplements will be issued.

The second specific project objective is to promote regional cross-border cooperation of SEE agricultural institutions as a tool for sharing scarce human resources in order to enable an efficient preparation of the region for the process of EU integration. The module will provide to the course participants the opportunity to meet experts from other countries, exchange knowledge, experience and enable future close cooperations. Anyhow, the main tool for establishing cross-border cooperation will be the annual regional conferences focusing on issues that Balkan agricultural sectors are facing. It will be a two-day event. Its first day will be dedicated to the presentation of the best seminar works from each country, whereas the second day will be organized as an open discussion about common problems connected with the development and transition of the agricultural sector. In total, two regional and one international (final) conferences will be organized with the main objective to enable better cross-border institutional cooperation and exchange of scarce expertise available within the region. In total 60 experts will have opportunity to meet each other and discuss common problems. They will have the opportunity to make personal contacts which makes future collaboration easier.

An expert data base is planned to be established in the scope of the project, since a central dataset is regarded as the first step towards promoting and establishing a better sharing of human resources (experts) available regionally.

The third project objective is to prepare the base for future partnerships between the EU and SEE agricultural institutions in order to promote a twinning-like type of technical support and on-the-job training experience. In order to reach this objective it is planned to select 8 (2 per country) professionals working on EU integration issues (mostly from executive agencies) to be trained in EU institutions operating in their respective area. The selected persons will acquire by this on-the-job training very specific practical skills and knowledge on how to organize the work in their own countries. The duration of this practical placement will be 4 weeks. Subsequent to the training the participant will have the opportunity to evaluate the traineeship, as well as the host institution will evaluate the trainees’ performances. Experts from the partners’ country will have the opportunity to establish personal contacts with experts working in the same area in EU institutions. Those persons from EU institutions could become "resource persons" for the partner country. It will strengthen the international institutional cooperation and motivate the development of twinning projects. In order to enable institutions to benefit from the project activities, English language courses will be organized. In each country 15 experts will have the opportunity to improve their English skills. In total, 60 people will be re-trained within the project.

The fourth project objective is to ensure the efficient project management, project result quality, dissemination and sustainability. Special importance will be given to the project dissemination. In that context all modules prepared – presentations and teaching materials as well as the best seminars and round table conclusions will be available as paper versions in NPO and as electronic copies supported by FAO SEE WEB forum and SEE CORE GROUP. These modules will also be offered to postgraduate students at partners’ institutions as optional subjects. Using already the very well established tool FAO SEE AGRO WEB, the dissemination of the project results and also its sustainability will be ensured. Additionally, at the end of the project a final conference on "Benefits of Balkan agricultural institutions cross-border cooperation in the light of EU integration process" will be organized to share and disseminate the results learned during the project implementation. Booklets with key notes will be prepared and made available.

The project sustainability will be ensured by involvement of younger staff (postgraduate students) from each partner country in the preparation and delivering of modules. For them it will be one form of on-the-job training aiming to improve their skills to transfer knowledge and train people.

In order to ensure good project management the following management structure will be created:

• the project steering committee (the representatives of the EU and the partners universities in charge of the project coordination) as a top management body of the project
• inter-country knowledge-based platform’s management body (representatives of the members of the country consortium) in charge of implementing countrywide activities
• project management office placed at the University of Hohenheim
• national platform administration office, dealing with day-to-day management of the project and platforms work
• quality ensurance commission at the project level. This commission will be a virtual body coordinating all quality insurance activities. It will be led by a quality ensurance manager selected at the first project steering committee meeting. The international Tempus evaluation will be organized by invited members of the on-going Tempus IB-project "EU Food Policy and Legislation".