European Transport Projects & Annual Meeting

The first meeting in 2004 for the Commission on Transportation took place in Kaunas, Lithuania, 10-11 June 2004.55 participants from 22 different cities in the Baltic Sea Region came to the City Municipality Hall in Kaunas to participate in the conference.

From a questionnaire sent out during autumn 2003, and also from discussions at previous meetings, we learnt that many TransCom members felt the need for more information about European Transport Projects and funding possibilities. Since the Baltic countries and Poland just entered the EU, it was now the right time to discuss and exchange ideas about what funding possibilities there are in the sustainable transport field. The speakers from the European Commission and from Swedish Association of Local Authorities gave an insight in priorities within EU and Interreg funding possibilities.

After the more "theoretical" aspects, speakers from the Guidemaps project, Goteborg, Tallinn, Malmo, Gdynia and Kaunas showed some practical examples and their experiences from different types of European projects.

The following day, 11 June, the Annual Commission Meeting took place. The participants discussed, among other things, how the commission could work, how to use the network as efficient as possible, what could be the future topics for seminars etc.

The Commission on Transportation would like to thank all participants and the City of Kaunas for hosting the seminar and the Annual meeting.