Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Sharing borders, groving closer.

On 21 September, European Cooperation will be celebrated all over Europe and in the neighbouring countries. Almost 40 countries will come together to celebrate cooperation and bridge-building between local communities across borders. Public events will take place during the week of 17th -23rd September all over Europe.

Since the beginning of the 1990s more than 20 000 projects, co-funded by the EU, have contributed to improving the lives of European citizens across borders, from creating jobs to protecting the environment to improving health care services, transport and energy.





The idea of the European Cooperation Day is to make this work done more visible.

The Karelia ENPI CBC programme is also participating to the day. The programme itself will presented at the University of Oulu on 21st September and at the International Innovation Forum in St Petersburg on following week. Several projects will open their doors for the public during the week and tell about their work.

You can read more of the European Cooperation Day from www.ecday.eu and find the list of the projects' activities from our website.


Henna-Mari Helenius
Programme Coordinator




Tuesday, September 11, 2012

«Eco-efficient tourism» project develops tourist sites along the Blue Highway


«Eco-efficient tourism» project is being implemented in the framework of the Karelia ENPI CBC Programme. It is aimed at making Euregio Karelia more attractive for tourists through gradual leveling of the quality of services provided to tourists on the two sides of the border. That also includes introduction of eco-efficient technologies for management of recreational areas and improving the quality of services offered in active tourism destinations in Republic of Karelia (Lake Ladoga and Syamozero areas) in co-operation with adjacent Finnish areas. The project will contribute to making pilot areas more comfortable, safe, environmentally friendly and known for these features. It will also significantly improve cross-border tourism transboundary practices and regional development co-operation. The partner consortium headed by non-profit partnership «Centre for Problems of the North, Arctic and Cross-border Cooperation» unites a number of partners. The Russian partners are Karelian Research Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Energy Efficiency Centre, Petrozavodsk Municipal Utility College, Pryazha and Sortavala Municipal District Administrations. The Finnish partners are represented by Ecofoster Group Oy, Finnish Environment Institute (Joensuu office), Centre for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment for North Karelia, Metsähallitus (Natural Heritage Services, South Finland/North Karelia), Ilomantsi Municipality and an associate partner - Karelia Expert.

Seminar «Strategies and best practices for sustainable/ green development of cities and regions» that was held in Petrozavodsk on June 13-15, 2012 officially launched the Project: the first half of June 13 was given to the working kick-off meeting, where plans for the project implementation were discussed.

Pryazha and Sortavala Municipal Districts became a place for an «Eco-efficient tourism» project expedition that took place on July, 16–17th, 2012. The main goal of an expedition was to explore the area and find most suitable places for the introduction of eco-efficient technologies for recreational area management and the improvement of quality of services offered in active tourism destinations in the Republic of Karelia.

The expedition was specifically aimed at gathering information about the situation in the districts for further selection of pilot areas, that will be facilitated as long-stay recreation areas on the shores of Ladoga and Syamozero lakes and short-stay (from a few minutes to a few hours) stopover sites along the "Blue Highway" route.

The expert team visited more than 20 potential places. In several weeks the experts will choose several pilot areas for further development according to data dealing with issues of property, land acquisition, accessibility, recreational appeal, their popularity among tourists, amount of investments needed, etc. Later, special management models for maintenance of the installed equipment will be elaborated. They will consider interests of local people and tourists, envisage joint responsibility of local administration and businessmen for waste disposal, energy and water supply of chosen territories.

According to the Leader of the Project, the director of „North-Centre“ Igor Shevchuk, in spite of the fact that the Project envisages facilitation of only 2 long-stay areas and several short-stay stopovers, the infrastructure development itself as well as comfort improvement and favorable atmosphere for people has a great significance. It has a certain influence on creating positive image of the Republic of Karelia in tourists' minds and on destination options for tourists. Local people will get more comfortable and sustainable environment in recreation areas, get rid of dumps in these areas, have new opportunities for the development of small business.

The development of caravanning can be considered as one of the most prospective tourism spheres. Nowadays it is one of the most popular kinds of auto tourism in Europe and the US. According to World Tourism Organization, caravanning amounts to 17% of all tourists. According to the representative of „KarelCaravanService“ Konstantin Ekhov, who took part in the expedition, auto tourism in Russia is underdeveloped not only because of rough roads, but also because of the absence of well equipped sites and roadside infrastructure. Though the Project doesn't envisage this scale of investments, the plans for facilitation of chosen areas will provide the opportunities for creation of caravan parking sites and adequate infrastructure. The fact that the Project attracts the attention of potential investors to the issue of caravanning development is a positive factor.

The participants of the Project have a positive perception of the Project's perspectives and believe that the implementation of planned activities and events will make Karelia more attractive for tourists and will contribute to the creation of favorable and comfortable life for local people.

Elena Cherniakevich, project manager

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Contracting of the Tourism projects


The contracting process of projects that were awarded a grant from the Tourism Cooperation call has been finished successfully and almost all projects are up and running. I am quite happy with how most of the contract negotiations went, and despite some difficult issues that were encountered along the way, there was always willingness on both sides to find a quick and simple solution that enabled the negotiations to proceed. This promises well for the implementation of the projects and should the same energy, perseverance and determination be put into the projects in the future, they will certainly all succeed and produce lasting results for the years to come.

I am sure that the contracting process has been a learning experience for everyone. The basic idea of the contracting process from our side is to remove ineligible costs from the budget, as all the successful applicants know by now. I will not repeat the criteria that are used to make an eligibility assessment here – those who are interested can look them up in the Programme Manual and the Guidelines for the Calls for Proposals – but in general most ineligible costs seemed to be related to activities that did not support or advance the objectives of the project at all. However, surprisingly many of these cases turned out to be misunderstandings, mostly because the description of the activity was not sufficiently detailed or the term used for the activity was misleading. While these issues were transient in nature and easy to fix, it does take a lot of time to try to clear up what is really meant by a description or term. This is a valuable lesson for all of us, because such issues needlessly prolong the contracting process and they could easily be avoided by paying more attention on how activities are described in the application.

The Tourism Cooperation projects will have their next seminar in December. It will be interesting to see how the tourism portfolio of our Programme is progressing and what kind of results we can expect from it. Considering the promising atmosphere of cooperation that we had in Joensuu last February, I am sure we all have high hopes and expectations of the tourism projects.

See you all in December!

Toni Saranpää
Programme Coordinator