Regional Policy and Decentralization in South Eastern Europe
event
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Date
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Monday 10 & Tuesday 11 May 2010
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Location
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Zagreb, Croatia
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Organisers
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LSEE-Research on Southe Eastern Europe
Institute for International Relations, Zagreb
The Freidrich Ebert Stiftung
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Supported by
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The National Bank of Greece
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During May and June 2010 LSEE organised three events in South Eastern Europe, including a major academic conference on regional development and decentralisation policies in the region.
Regional development has been a key dimension of EU policy, designed to ensure convergence, regional competitiveness and employment, and territorial cooperation. As such it has an important role in the European integration agenda, not just in the existing member states but also in the candidate and potential candidate states in South Eastern Europe. At the same time, in recent years decentralisation of administrative power and responsibility has been carried out in many countries in order to consolidate the new democratic systems, strengthen local governance, promote local economic development, and provide public services that are more responsive to local needs. However, decentralisation may also worsen the delivery of public services if not adequately supplemented by fiscal decentralisation.
The LSEE Research Conference in Zagreb sought to address these issues with a focus on South Eastern Europe by attracting scholars both from the region and from elsewhere. The response to the Call for Papers was highly encouraging and the organisers had a difficult time selecting participants from such a large number of high quality applicants. The conference itself was a resounding success and helped LSEE to achieve the aim of enabling closer links between academics and institutions from the region and farther afield. Over 40 people attended the conference, including speakers from Croatia, FYR Macedonia, and Serbia, as well as EU countries including Romania, Greece, Italy, and the UK. Each session was commented on by a discussant leading to lively debates on issues such as regional policies, spatial inequalities, administrative and fiscal decentralisation and inter-municipal cooperation. It is hoped that a selection of the papers will be published as an edited book, while some of the best papers have been chosen to appear in a special issue of an academic journal.
The LSEE Research Conference on Regional Policy and Decentralisation would not have been possible without the cooperation of the Institute for International Relations, Zagreb, and the Freidrich Ebert Stiftung, and the support of the National Bank of Greece.