Wednesday 26 november 2008

General Assembly of EBA
Yesterday, on the 25th of November, EBA hold it’s 2008 General Assembly. In it’s working part, the members unanimously agreed on:

Report on the Annual Financial Statements of EBA for 2007.
Decision for election of independent Audit Company for auditing the Annual Financial Statement of EBA for 2007.
Election procedure for the Members of the Managing Board of EBA
·        Trajce Nikolovki

·        Svetozar Janevski

Report on the activities of EBA for 2007/2008.
Discussion on the budget and activities of EBA for 2008/2009.
After the working part, in the General Assembly too place:

·        Mr. Fatmir Besimi – The Minister of Economy

·        Mr. Boris Cizelj - SBRA-Slovenian Business&Research Association

·        Mr Andreja Stojkovski – The Macedonian Centre for European Education

 

Press Realize

On the invitation of EBA, a soon as the General Assembly ended, prof.dr. Boris Cizelj, President of the Slovenian Lobbying Association in Brussels (Slovenian Business&Research Association-SBRA), and President of the Lobby Group of the newly accepted EU members, had a presentation on the subject: Representing the Macedonian Interests – Ways and Possibilities.

Prof. Cizelj, presented the possibilities of using the EU resources, more specifically, those form the “The Community Program” project. In this program, you need to directly apply in EC in Brussels, and if you are selected, you will get a budget of 15 billion EUR for a period of one year.   

Also, he had stated that, today, in about 3000 lobbying organizations that work on the field of representation of their clients, work about 16.500 professional lobbyists 

Form the new member states; in Brussels there are already 43 lobby organizations.

Form the countries form the Former Republic of Yugoslavia, in Brussels there are 10 lobby organizations: 5 form Croatia, 2 form Serbia, and one form BiH and Montenegro.

Since our country has a need for protecting it’s interests, prof. Cizelj, said that the institute for developed studies ECPD, that exists 5 years, recently made the initiative for forming a  modern Macedonian Lobbying Office in Brussels. This office will especially promote the economy, the development of the local community, the science institutions and other organizations, with the status of Association with Publicly Private Character.

The Macedonian Office in Skopje will have it’s Name “Macedonian Brussels Bureau, MBB” will start working on January of February 2009.

The services that this MBB will provide will be form these areas:

Information services
Analytical – Consultants Services
Educational Activities
Promotional Activities
Lobbying services, in a much narrowed sense
Logistics services
 

The initiative for opening this Bureau is based on the 9 years of the positive work experience of the Slovenian lobbying offices, and the support of the Macedonian government and some other international organizations.

This initiative was also supported by: Economic Chamber of Macedonia, Macedonian Association of Chambers of Commerce, and some Macedonian companies like: Stopanska Bank AD Skopje, Komercjala Bank AD Skopje, Alkaluid AD Skopje, Eurolink AD, IZIS AD, some universities and the local community

In order for this Bureau to have a successful start, it will corporate with the Slovenian Office in Brussels, that is established since 1999 and has 6 employees.    

 

For those interested in the presentation klick here