Newsletter - November 2017

20-11-2017


	INTRODUCTION

Dear Readers,

We are pleased to share with you some of the latest updates of the ATTRACTIVE DANUBE project. As the first seven months of the project are already over, we would like to familiarize you with our first steps and activities, which are now running in full swing.


	PROJECT WORKFLOW

The first step of identifying and choosing the appropriate attractiveness indicators to describe national attractiveness and support relevant development policies were chosen and identified via our stakeholders, thus resulting in the selection of a set of representing indicators. It is a participatory planning process – relevant stakeholders present at the national workshops are helping us to choose the right indicators from their practical experience. Currently the series of 1st national workshops is over and the 2nd round of workshops is now running in most of the project partners’ countries. This will result in a concrete set of indicators for each country.

The infographics below describes the project process in greater detail:

Who are the appropriate stakeholders for the ATTRACTIVE DANUBE project?

Data and indicator producers and users, future users of the project platform and experts in the field of spatial planning and sustainable development. In practice – municipalities, regions, local authorities, state administration, business and academia and non-governmental organizations.

Now we are at this point:

Organization of 3 national workshops with relevant stakeholders aimed at identifying the national sets of indicators.

Which indicators are we going to use for the national platform?

In close cooperation with the workshop participants we try to choose the best set of indicators describing the territorial attractiveness and support relevant development policies. Further steps are to verify if all data for these indicators are available and ensure them for the national platform.

Creation of the user-friendly platform for indicators – 1 common and 11 at national level

This tool is being developed by the Geodetic Institute of Slovenia and will serve as a visualisation tool for the chosen indicators and therefore should support important decision making. There will be one common platform with 22 common indicators and 11 national platforms extended with a unique set of national indicators.

Presentation of the platforms at national workshops

There will be 3 national training workshops in Q1/2018 and Q2/2019, dedicated to the presentation of the common platform and training of its use.

Organization of 3 workshops for testing the platform at transnational level and to define policy recommendations

Another 3 transnational workshops are planned for testing of the decision processes at the transnational level and to make recommendations for the political representation.

Platform maintenance at least for 5 years, ideally longer after its inclusion in some decision-making process

The platform will be maintained for at least 5 years and all its data will be kept up to date. In an ideal case the platform will be implemented in some decision making processes and still used after the mandatory sustainability period.

Fact-based decisions at local and regional level

The main goal of the project is to facilitate coordinated and fact-based decisions at local and regional level.


	First national attractive danube workshops

What was happening at the 1st national ATTRACTIVE DANUBE workshops?

The first round of national ATTRACTIVE DANUBE workshops was, focused mainly on the overall presentation of the project and introduction of the concept of territorial attractiveness. Possibilities and approaches for assessing the attractiveness of the Danube region were discussed and many indicators for assessing the attractiveness of the territory were proposed. These workshops have been the first, but most important step in order for us to start-up a dialogue with relevant stakeholders and to promote territorial attractiveness as a concept.

The active approach and participation of stakeholders at the workshops yielded quite a huge number of new topics and proposed indicators. To sort out and finalize the proper indicators for each country will be the challenge for the second round of workshops.

General observation gained through the workshops is that it is quite difficult to identify a common set of indicators for the Danube Region due to different context of each country, quality of life, strategic goals and documents as well as present and historical differences.

The workshops put together diverse groups of people from different organizations – state administration, regions, academia and the business sector. This group, with a common interest in this topic, haven't had the opportunity to meet so far, and helped us to look at the issue of territorial attractiveness from a new point of view. Having given us this overall point of view, it further helped us to build and strengthen the network of stakeholders important for fulfilling the project goals.

Here is the list of all the 1st national ATTRACTIVE DANUBE workshops:

If you didn't have time to visit the workshop already held in your country, you can find here at least some interesting presentations.


	second round of project workshops

Most of the second national workshops are taking place during the autumn. They are building on the outcomes of the first workshops and their main goal is to select the most suitable national indicators and further collect appropriate indicator's data for the monitoring of territorial attractiveness.

Below you can find a dated list of held and planned 2nd national workshops:

Some countries have already planned their 3rd national workshops:

Hungary, 12.12.2017
Czech Republic, 27.2.2018
Bosnia and Herzegovina, February 2018


	danube region is really attractive...

Did you know about it? Have a look at the attractive sites of project partner countries…

Watch our new video Our Homeland Is Amazing.

Many thanks to First Hungarian Responsible Innovation Association who made this video for the project consortium.

Managing Authority | Joint Secretariat
Széchenyi István tér 7-8 - 1051 Budapest, Hungary
E-mail: danube@interreg-danube.eu | Web: www.interreg-danube.eu

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Programme co-funded by European Union funds (ERDF, IPA, ENI)