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The interdisciplinary project,  “GisNS - Development of Online Geodata Portal of Cultural Heritage in Novi Sad” was successfully concluded on 22-23 January 2015 in Novi Sad, Serbia.

The Serbian Institute for Public Health “Dr. Milan Jovanovic Batut” as project beneficiary institution, hosted the Meeting at its headquarters in Belgrade on 26-29 January 2015.

On the occasion of the first Committee of National Coordinators (CNC) meeting under the Macedonian CEI Presidency 2015 in Skopje on 3 February, six Technical Assistance projects were approved. They will be financed by the CEI Fund at the EBRD, fully contributed by Italy, with a total value of 1.045.000 EUR.

Fifty scientists from institutions located in ten CEI Member Countries, and representatives from the CEI Science and Technology Network took part in a Workshop on "Various Instruments to Support Research in Less performing Countries" on 5 February in Trieste. The event was organised by the Central European Initiative in cooperation with the Directorates for Research and Innovation and for the Joint Research Center (JRC) of the European Commission.

On 4 February 2015, this year’s Macedonian Presidency of the Central European Initiative (CEI) and the CEI Secretariat organised a Promotional Event in Skopje. It served as a platform for presenting the priorities and programme of the Macedonian CEI Presidency and of the overall activities of the CEI. In particular,  the CEI funds, programmes and instruments of cooperation were illustrated before the representatives of the Embassies, National Coordinators and above all Macedonian Institutions (both private and public and NGOs).

On 3 February 2014, Skopje hosted the first meeting of the Committee of National Coordinators (CNC) under the Macedonian CEI Presidency. It was opened by the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Macedonia, Nikola Poposki, who outlined the main priorities of his country.
 
Countering youth unemployment in the northern part of Bosnia and Herzegovina (40%) is high on the agenda of  the Municipality of Gradiška. It is developing a new ICT business incubator, which aims at meeting the needs of young entrepreneurs for infrastructural, technical/education and ICT services for supporting the main economic branches in the region: agriculture and commerce.
Targeted participants from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Hungary, Germany, Serbia, Slovakia and Ukraine took part in the First Clustering Workshop on the European Research Consortium (ERIC), organised in the framework of the Danube-INCO.NET project for Advancing Research and Innovation in the Danube Region.
The recently concluded multi-stakeholder Design-MTS project has facilitated enterprises in Europe’s Machine Tool Sector (MTS) to take a strategic approach to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and sustainability. Since July 2013, Design MTS partners - in the partly funded European Commission project - have raised the bar for CSR in the machine tool sector by practically integrating a multi-stakeholder approach to raise awareness and socially responsible best practices and to enhance the visibility and value of CSR in the MTS sector.

The implementation of the Project PACKSENSOR, dedicated to sustainable food packaging and monitoring in South Serbia, officially started with a kick-off meeting in Leskovac on 14-15 January 2015.

The project, fully titled PACKSENSOR - The impact of the controlled atmosphere on quality and safety of the close-seal-packaged food applied in the SMEs of South Serbia, aims to provide solutions for monitoring the influence of packaging on food safety, currently not practiced by local firms due to the lack of trained personnel and proper equipment.

Tiha K. Gudac, born in Zagreb in 1982, was awarded for the documentary film Goli (Naked Island) which, as underlined by the jury, denounces how a nation’s past can haunt its present”. The CEI Award (3.000 EUR) was presented by Alternate Secretary General, Amb. Margit Waestfelt, on the occasion of the awarding ceremony in Trieste on 22 January.

The representatives of the International Visegrad Fund (IVF) visited the CEI Secretariat in Trieste on Wednesday, 21 January, to exchange views on possibilities of cooperation in Central and Eastern Europe. 
 
The CEI is one of the sponsors of the Trieste Film Festival, the Italian leading appointment with Central and Eastern European cinema taking place in Trieste from 16 to 22 January 2014.

Endorsed and co-funded by the European Commission under the Competitiveness and Innovation Programme, DESIGN-MTS – Defining Social responsibility Interventions for a Grounded Networking in Machine Tool Sector is ending on 31 December 2014. The project was led by the University of Macerata in partnership with CECIMO, CSR-Europe, IRES and the University of Nottingham and the CEI.

Nearly two decades after the end of the conflict in former Yugoslavia, Bosnia-Herzegovina remains one of the world's most mine contaminated countries with an estimated 2.5% of its territory at risk. The May floods have complicated the situation further, potentially contaminating the already cleared fields.

In order to further strengthen economic and social development in its non-EU members, the CEI is promoting synergies between the EU-funded project ener2i and the KEP AUSTRIA Project Innovation stimulation for Moldovan SMEs in the field of energy efficiency and renewable energies (CEI-ener2i-MD) promoted by the Austrian Centre for Social Innovation (ZSI).
 
Fifteen targeted meetings with representatives of various EU institutions were held on 10 and 11 December in Brussels within the first WIDER EU level Road Show, organised as part of the project's networking activities.

Representatives of the 19 partner insitutions of the Danube-INCO.NET project gathered in Vienna on 11 December for an overall assessment of the work progress, the main results achieved so far and future challenges.

In its capacity of leader of the Work Package on energy efficiency, renewable energy and bioeconomy, the CEI presented the activities carried out in the first project implementation year, as well as the forthcoming tasks and events.
 
Within the KEP AUSTRIA Call 2014, four project proposals were approved by the CEI Committee of National Coordinators in October 2014 with a total CEI grant amounting to 186.000 EUR and a total project cost of 381.309 EUR. These activities - selected among 117 applications which have undergone a two-step evaluation procedure - have recently started their implementation phase:
 
On 8-10 April 2015, the Danube:Future project is organising in Klagenfurt its first International Workshop on “Challenges and potentials for a sustainable development in the Danube Region: Contributing to HORIZON 2020”, with funding provided by the Alpen-Adria-Universität-Klagenfurt and the Central European Initiative (Cooperation Fund 2014).

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