The First Year Review (FYR) monitoring event within the second Steering Committee meeting for RADAR project – Risk Assessment on Danube Area Roads – took place on May 13-14, 2019, in Sofia, Bulgaria. The meeting was hosted and organised by the Bulgarian Association for Road Safety – BBARS.

Along with Project Officer Ana Leganel from the Joint Secretariat, the first results and experiences of the project implementation were concluded on the first day of Steering Committee meeting of the project. RADAR Project Partners as well as Associated Strategic Partners were present and contributed their positions.

On the second day of the meeting project partners and representatives of associated strategic partners discussed best solutions to engage the key stakeholders in the implementation to ensure the establishment of planned stakeholder networks, their feedback and contribution to the project activities and the development and uptake of outputs. Therefore, the monitoring visit turned out to be a milestone in internal communication, strengthening the project team and creating perspectives for follow-up initiatives.

For the RADAR project team, the formal obligation of having a First Year Review has been a very useful tool to discuss the stage of project implementation with our project officer, having the time to reflect strengths and weaknesses within the team, and to continue our implementations with new inspiration.

The first year around the sun for the RADAR project:

• June 2018: Kick-off meeting of the RADAR project in Budapest, Hungary
• October 2018: 1st Danube Road Safety Conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia
• December 2018: The Danube Region Transport Days in Ljubljana, Slovenia
• March 2019:
  • Transnational Road Safety Expert Group First Meeting
  • Launch of first Road Safety Infrastructure Trainings in Slovenia
  • Launch of the Road Safety Infrastructure Trainings in Croatia
  • Study Visits related to infrastructure provisions for VRU in Slovenia and Croatia. Continuing in the United Kingdom, Hungary, and Austria, the Visits will demonstrate best practice in key thematic areas.
• March-November 2019: Road Infrastructure Training in Hungary, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Moldova, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Austria, and the Czech Republic followed by two-day webinars in October.
• May 2019: Plenary Steering Committee meeting along with EuroRAP General Assembly, Sofia BG.