Businessmed participation to the Horizon 2020 Capacity Building Sub-Group Meeting which took place in Rome on December 9th 2008

Union of Mediterranean Confederations of Enterprises participated to the Horizon 2020 Capacity Building Sub-Group Meeting which took place in Rome on December 9th 2008. This meeting was organised by the European Commission within the Initiative Horizon 2020 and aimed at drafting a road map relating to the work programme adopted at Barcelona concerning the three priority areas: industrial emission, municipal waste and urban waste water.

The meaning ran over one day with two sessions in the morning and two in the afternoon. The discussions of the participants covered the following issues:

• What is meant by capacity building and what should be done?
• What vehicle for regional capacity building
• The work programme

Capacity building can be grouped according to two approaches: 1) Aimed at a particular level/stakeholder (local authorities) and cutting across different sectors (water, waste, …); 2) Aimed at a particular sector but addressing all of the levels/stakeholders that deal with this sector (local, national, regional,…)

For Horizon 2020, the focus should be on measures directly related to the aim of de-pollution with a particular attention to measures linked to pollution reduction projects or monitoring.
Capacity building should be implemented through institutions, organisations or networks active in the Mediterranean.

In the end, it was agreed that a programme will be drafted identifying the main need of each group and then this will be circulated all the members of the steering group for input; this should be done by the end of January. The final draft should be ready in February.

A core group was identified for the drafting of the work programme which will be in charge of this first draft. This core group includes: BUSINESSMED, UNEP/MAP, CP/RAC and MIO.