About the activity

The Best Practice Programme (BPP) has been developed by the Centre of Expertise to identify, celebrate and disseminate best practices in specific fields.

The Programme was run in Greece from October 2016 to June 2017 with the support of the Hellenic Agency for Local Development and Local Government.

The theme chosen for this first edition was local economic development in the field of agriculture, new technology, renewable energy and tourism. The final report describes the steps undertaken in Greece and contains the evaluation matrix to select the best practices, the process flowchart and general guidelines to support any central and local authorities willing to roll out the programme in the future.

 Methodology

The Centre of Expertise received applications from 18 municipalities and the evaluation process led to the selection of 4 best practices in two areas:

Tourism

• Climbing park, Notia Kynouria
• Reward, Chersonisos

New technology

• Digital Tour, Tripoli
• People, Thermi & Thessaloniki

Representatives of the best practices were awarded in May 2016 and invited to participate in a study visit to exchanged experience with Croatian stakeholders on new technology and tourism projects implemented by municipalities. This Best Practice Academy took place in June 2016 in Dubrovnik and aimed at strengthening local capacity to plan inclusive and sustainable practices in the future.

Furthermore, an open day was organised in Tripoli (27 June 2017) to further disseminate the experience of Notya Kinouria and Tripoli.

 Acknowledgements

Greek stakeholders expressed very positive feedbacks concerning their participation in the Best Practice Programme of the Council of Europe. According to them, the programme:

• “creates a critical mass, it engages Greek citizens in ambitious projects”
• “triggers the change”
• “is a push to move on”

The Centre of Expertise would like to thank all parties involved for their enthusiasm and commitment to the activity.