The Council of Europe’s Centre of Expertise was invited to attend this high-profile event and to contribute with its experience in dealing with the matters affecting both central and local or regional level. Particularly interesting and useful were discussions relevant to the current situation and mechanisms in place in the EaP countries.

Gennadiy Kosyak, speaking on behalf of the Centre, highlighted concrete aspects of co-operation under on-going PCF programme namely as concerns elaboration of Local Finance Benchmark (LFB) for the common use of the EaP countries and Inter-Municipal Co-operation (IMC) and stressed that the implementation of the IMC activities and LFB at the bilateral level will be a real test to show if the existing mechanisms are workable when it comes to concrete initiatives and projects implementation that involve both levels, which will particularly by the case for the LFB implementation.