Open Days in Murmansk
The EU Open Days local event workshop "Regional Cooperation for Regional growth", was held in Murmansk on October 14th. See photos from the event here.
(Logo is manipulated in to photo)
On October 14th the North Sweden, North Finland and North Norway European offices, in collaboration with the Norwegian Barents Secretariat, invited to a EU Open Days local event workshop in Murmansk.
The event was part of the EU's Open Days. The European Union’s OPEN DAYS - European Week of Cities and Regions, is an annual event held I Brussels, and it has become the leading event in the regional policy calendar. For 4 days, more than 7000 participants meet in Brussels to discuss a whole range of issues relevant to the implementation of European Union cohesion policy.
Second part of the Open Days event is always local workshops and seminars. The North Norway, North Sweden and North Finland offices located their event in Murmansk on the 14th of October. The same week as the foreign ministers of the Barents Region gathered in Murmansk and the same week as the Murmansk Economic Forum were arranged. Energy and development of oil and gas fields in the Barents Sea is one of the hot topics of the High North at present. Therefore it was natural to choose Murmansk as host city of the local Open Days event.
The central theme of the workshop was “Regional Cooperation for Regional growth”. Frenando Garces from the European Commission opened the workshop, focusing on EU's Northern Dimension program and EU's Arctic policy in the context of the Barents Cooperation. The Head of Troms County Council, Mrs Pia Svensgaard talked about the Troms County strategy for their two years of chairmanship in the Barents Regional council. She was followed by Esko Lotvonen, regional Mayor of Lapland, who gave his view on a balanced development in the Barents Region. The last session was opened by Mr. Stig Nerdal, who has studied the transport opportunities of Murmansk, and the program was ended by Alexei Bambulyak who presented his report on oil transport fra Northwest-Russia.