Enlargement Day 2016

The Committee of the Regions (CoR) and DG Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations (DG NEAR), European Commission organised the event “Enlargement Day” in Brussels on 1-2 June 2016.

On the first day, meetings of the Working Groups on the Western Balkans and Turkey, Joint Consultative Committee (JCC) with Montenegro were held, whereas on the second day, the plenary session provided room for the representatives of EU institutions and members of local and regional authorities from the candidate and potential candidate countries to the EU membership to discuss the conclusions and share experiences and good practices.

The speakers at the Enlargement Day were Markku Markkula, CoR President, Karl-Heinz Lambertz, First Vice-President of the CoR, Maciej Popowski, Deputy Director-General in charge of Migration/Refugees and Security related issues, DG NEAR, Allan Jones, Head of Unit, Strategy, Policy, Planning, DG NEAR, Oriano Otočan, President of European Association for Local Democracy (ALDA), Anna Magyar, CoR rapporteur on Enlargement strategy 2015-2016, co-chairs of the Working Groups on the Western Balkans, Turkey and JCC with Montenegro, heads of Missions to the EU from Turkey, Montenegro, Albania and Bosnia and Hercegovina. The representatives of the Republic of Serbia were Ivan Bošnjak, State Secretary of the Ministry of State Administration and Local Government, and Dejan Jovanović, Co-chair of the JCC with the Republic of Serbia. During the meeting, an agreement was made to hold the following meeting of JCC with Serbia in Belgrade in September.

During the two-day event, video and printed material from Vojvodina and Standing Conference of Towns and Municipalities were available to all participants.