The 180 participants have discovered and analyzed new tools and funding opportunities for local entities

The closing of the second edition of the Seminar on European funds: tools and funding opportunities for local entities took place on 2 February. The course was organized by DIPLOCAT and the two municipal entities that are part of the consortium, the Catalan Association of Municipalities (ACM) and the Federation of Municipalities of Catalonia (FMC), with the collaboration of the Ministry for Foreign Action and Open Government of the Catalan Government.

This second edition, which began in September 2021, had 180 participants coming from  municipalities, county councils, provincial councils and other local bodies, and they have been trained on the new 2021-2027 programming period of European funding and the Next Generation funds.

The closing session was attended by Gerard Vives, Director General of the Institutional Representation of the Government Abroad and of the EU; Àlex Garrido, vice-president of the Federation of Municipalities of Catalonia (FMC) and mayor of Manlleu; Maite Selva, vice-president of the Catalan Association of Municipalities (ACM) and mayoress of Begur; and Elisabet Moragas, DIPLOCAT senior project manager. All of them were convinced that the seminar had been a success again and highlighted the good joint collaboration. Elisabet Moragas explained that DIPLOCAT has three main areas of work -connecting, projecting and empowering- and that the seminar is a clear example of the training role of the consortium.

The seminar has helped attendants to improve their knowledge of the European reality and has been taught by more than thirty experts, such as European Commission officials, university professors, officers from the Catalan Government in charge of managing European funds, officers from the Catalan Government Delegation in Brussels and city council managers who have obtained funding from the EU, who provided an overview of the different funds and the specific tools and instruments that Europe makes available to local administrations.

The last session included a practical workshop in which students were able to put into practice the theoretical concepts learned in recent months.