Assistant Minister of Foreign and European Affairs and national coordinator for EU Strategy for the Danube Region (EUSDR) opened the 4th Danube Financing Dialogue, held 23 and 24 April at the Croatian State Archives in Zagreb. The 4th Danube Financing Dialogue was organized as part of the EUSDR Priority Area 10 (strengthening institutional capacities and cooperation) with the aim of connecting the private and public sector representatives with representatives of financial institutions in order to seek ways of financing EUSDR projects.
The principal organizer is the City of Vienna, as the coordinator of the EUSDR PA 10, with executive aid by the Metis Company and the Vienna Contact Office in Zagreb (COMPRESS), while the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs will host the event. The 4th Danube Financing Dialogue is organized under the auspices of the Ministry of Regional Development and EU Funds and the Croatian National Bank, with 250 participants from 14 EUSDR countries in attendance.
Marušić greeted the participants in the capacity of the EUSDR national coordinator, underlining that DFD represented the ideal venue for the meeting of the European and national-level participants as well as financial institutions and project promoters.
Recalling the conclusions from the meeting of national EUSDR coordinators held 23 April in MFEA, Marušić cited a high level of harmonization of the EUSDR with the transnational Danube 2014-2020 programme, whose first call for project applications is to be published in the fall of 2015.
Marušić underscored that the EUSDR did not only represent a new platform of transnational cooperation envisioned as a project of European and national administrations, but of all social participants, which also had a strong dimension of EU enlargement onto five EUSDR countries which are not yet EU member states.
Marušić also stressed that the EUSDR had been incorporated into Croatia’s key programme documents for the 2014-2020 financial period, which opens up a series of financial sources for project stakeholders, such as the EU structural and investment funds as well as the EU Fund for Strategic Investments.