On 14 – 15 June 2018 JASPERS held its tenth annual stakeholder meeting in Sofia.
More than a hundred representatives from JASPERS beneficiary countries and partners attended the event. JASPERS high added value in EU funded projects was stressed in the meeting’s opening remarks by Denitsa Nikolova, Bulgaria’s Deputy Minister of Regional Development and Public Works and Anita Furerstenberg-Lucius, EIB Director of Operations for Central and South Eastern Europe Department as well as Erich Unterwurzacher, European Commission’s Director, DG REGIO.
The topics covered by the Meeting included lessons learned during the delivery of projects under the current programming period as well as the kind of support required for the next programming period. Lessons learned included technical issues identified, mostly in major projects prepared without JASPERS support, during project appraisals, so that these could be improved in future projects to be submitted for financing. Projects supported by JASPERS are less prone to interruptions during the approval process at the European Commission and in a better shape to be co-financed by potential lenders. This support could be extended also for the next programming period, together with the current capacity building activities to improve the institutional quality of counterparts.
Participants expressed the need to strengthen JASPERS’ role in supporting strategic planning, upstream project development, and cross-border and cross-sector projects.
EU Members States underlined their satisfaction with JASPERS and, in addition to the ongoing support to project preparation, expressed their interest in continuing this support. This interest refers not only to the current programming period, but also to 2021-2027.
The presentations are accessible here.