ELoGE in Croatia: first steps and establishing cooperation

 

ALDA continues to contributes to good governance on local level in Croatia and takes its activities on the next level. ALDA launched the ELOGE program for Croatia on the 22 November 2021 in Zagreb.

The project simply titled “European Label of Governance Excellence (ELoGE) in Croatia” was promoted in a hybrid type of event, where the representatives of municipalities could follow the presentation physically in Hotel Hilton, Zagreb and online on Zoom. 

The launching started with a short welcoming speech from M. Robert Ravenšćak, General Director of Ravecon LLC, our local partner organization and continued with the intervention from the President of ALDA M. Oriano Otocan and M. Niall Sheerin, representative of the Center of Expertise for Good governance, from the Council of Europe.

M.Otocan talked about the work of ALDA in Europe and specifically in Croatia. He also highlighted the duality of the local authorities in Croatia, the openness they show in certain topics but remain firmly closed for other. He considers that Croatia has reached certain level of expertise and maturity, but there are still difficulties that persist and this project will be perfect to tackle them.

M. Sheerin shared with the participant about the important work of the CoE and mentioned the future plans and programmes that they are working on, like the green agenda concerning LAs. He highlighted that in these eras of social media and advanced technology, local authorities need to be innovative and open to change, in order to be efficient and effective in responding to the needs of the citizens.

The opening speeches were followed by a presentation of the Eloge programme in Croatia, done by ms. Katica Janeva, ALDA’s regional coordinator for the Balkans, citing the details of the phases and processes that the LAs need to follow to be awarded the label, specific timing and timeline, tools and etc. The event was closed off with a Q&A session and a fruitful discussion.