Since last April, San Javier Town Council has been working on the development of its Local Strategy for Participation in European Projects with the aim of optimising the municipality’s position when competing for this type of programmes and funds from Europe.
The Strategy, which is being developed through a grant from the Directorate General for the European Union of the Autonomous Community of the Region of Murcia, aims to promote the participation of the City Council in directly managed European programmes such as Horizon Europe, LIFE, Interreg and Erasmus+, among others, as well as to position the municipality to obtain complementary European funds.
The Strategy also aims to provide tools to improve the conditions and internal infrastructure of the City Council to facilitate European participation. Along these lines, on 16 September, a participation day was held for technicians and those responsible for municipal services to deepen their knowledge and training with regard to European programmes.
Throughout the day, work was carried out on identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the City Council when applying for this type of project and establishing a strategic framework. The day will be completed with another online process on the thematic areas of interest to the municipality within the wide range of programmes available and the funding opportunities offered by the new European financial framework (MFF), with more than one billion euros for the period 2021-2027.
The Councillor for Finance, Héctor Verdú, stressed the importance of being well positioned to be eligible for any of the available European programmes and recalled that this whole process has included a training session on European projects, development of proposals, implementation and key points to consider, specifying the existing programmes and their priority areas of action. Héctor Verdú thanked the staff of the Centro Tecnológico de la Energía y el Medio Ambiente , CETENMA, for their work at the forefront of training and dynamisation of these days of participation «so enriching for the municipal technicians».