The low priority of the Western Balkans on the EU Commission's agenda, the absence of a technical unit within DG NEAR to be addressed to by LGAs, the scarce attention being given to LGAs in national IPA programming as well as consultation in the frame of the enlargement process are the most burning issues.

The project resulted in Concept and Methodology that provides directions on putting in place conditions for informed decision making towards establishment of a SEE Decentralisation Observatory.

"The level of decentralisation, accompanied by adequate resources remains the main challenge for local governments in South-East Europe”, said in his opening speech Mayor Aleksandar Bogdanovic, President of the Union of Municipalities of Montenegro.

The training covered the topics: Water policy, legal and institutional framework for WSS; Organisation of communal water services at the local level; Financial and operational performance improvement programme; Key areas of improvement: public service agreements and tariff policy; and Tools for effective management, key performance indicators and benchmarking.

The Regional Training is designed for teams of Mayors and Directors of Public Utility Companies from: Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia.

At the City to City Dialogue NALAS facilitated a roundtable of Ministries of Finance and LGAs titled “Collaborative National and Regional Dialogues for Improving the Intergovernmental Finance Systems in South East Europe”.

Is SEE Decentralisation Observatory needed? What functions should it perform? What areas should it cover? What kind of data to collect? How to use the data collected?

On the occasion of the World Tourism Day, the Global Green Destinations Day conference took place in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Ljubljana was pronounced the Top Sustainable Destination in the world, followed by: Drnis, Pula, Mali Losinj, Gorski Kotar, Island Krk, and Delnice.

NALAS work in the area of gender mainstreaming at local level in South-East Europe was presented at the regional conference "Promoting the values of gender equality: Civil society for social changes", organised in Skopje, Macedonia, on 28 September 2016.

Through one Generic and five specific ToTs, mentoring and support, NALAS created a pool of 33 trainers in water management and developed a training scheme with high quality standards that now ensures excellence in training providing for LGs and PUCs in SEE.