The European Union should deepen relations with neighbours on its eastern borders through more localised and targeted engagement, local and regional leaders from the EU and its partner countries have said. In a report prepared under the leadership of our Czech Member Dr Pavel Branda adopted on 12 September in Turku (Finland), they advised the EU to increase its support for small cross-border projects designed to increase community contacts in the six Eastern Partnership countries: Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. 

The recommendation to increase the EU's funding for small cross-border projects came from our Czech Member Dr Pavel Branda, Deputy Mayor of Rádlo, near the Czech Republic's borders with Germany and Poland.

The ECR Member said: "The Eastern Partnership is about results – it is working on '20 deliverables by 2020' – and about building up relations. In my experience, good cross-border relations and strong economic ties can be built up very effectively through local projects, often at very little cost. The budget for the EU's current cross-border programme in these six countries is very modest – just €17.5 million – and most of that goes to relatively large projects".

"The EU should increase its budget, simplify processes, and introduce people-to-people projects with a lower minimum project size and with lower co-financing rates, thereby supporting a larger number of small projects. This would encourage the participation of smaller applicants, such as small municipalities and civil-society organisations. This could also help the emergence of more permanent, bottom-up forms of cooperation, such as the Euroregions."

The EU created the Eastern Partnership in 2009, and the following year the European Committee of the Regions created the Conference of Regional and Local Authorities for the Eastern Partnership (CORLEAP) to ensure that all levels of government could have an opportunity to share their experience.

The European Commission and the European External Action Service are inviting contributions on the future of the Eastern Partnership, with a deadline for online contributions set for 31 October.

The CoR is currently drafting recommendations that will also consolidate previous work done by it and by CORLEAP. The Partnership's future was also the centrepiece of debate at the meeting in Turku, with diplomats from the EU and Sweden joining CORLEAP members and the CoR's rapporteur-general on the topic, Tadeusz Andrzejewski, a member the ECR Group and of Vilnius municipal council, to discuss the possible contribution of local and regional authorities.