REC Country Office Slovenia
 

Contents of this page:
Establishment Staff Budget Achievements Projects Expertise Donors Contact address

Year of Establishment:
1993

Current Staff:
Milena Marega, Country Office Director
Tatjana Studen, Financial and Project Officer
Mateja Sepec, Project Manager
Albin Keuc, Project Manager
Blanka Koron, Intern

Operational Budget in 2006: 
EUR 178.643

Major Achievements:
The first activities of the REC CO in the 1990s were related to providing environmental NGOs and local communities with training on environmental project management, accounting, and with financial support for their environmental activities. In 10 years of operation, the REC CO expanded its activities to all environmental stakeholder groups and created a broader field of environmental protection and sustainable development. The CO significantly supported communication and cooperation between all environmental stakeholders. It organised seminars, workshops and forums, providing trainings and information, with grants enabling the REC CO to assist Slovenian environmental NGOs, local communities, local authorities, business and academic sectors in becoming important performers of environmental protection activities and of national development programmes.

Knowledge and expertise in environmental protection, sustainable development issues and project management enabled the CO to get involved in implementation of several national and international projects and programmes. Among other things, the CO also took over as secretariat of several Phare cross-border programmes (1997-2003), the Phare Access Programme (2002/2003), Technical Assistance to Global Environmental Facility Focal Point (2000/2001) and Technical Assistance for Management of Project Preparation Facility Grant Scheme PPF II (2003) and provided technical assistance for management of "Cross-Border Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Development" (2006), and “Strengthening Technological Centres” (2006) projects.

Outstanding recent achievements are listed below as follows:

• Inclusive governance and implementation of partnership principle in European structural funds have become the priority working areas of the CO. Local communities, governmental institutions and civil society organizations are assisted in building capacity for cooperation and partnership.
• For 9 years the CO Slovenia has been providing the technical assistance for managing Phare grant schemes. CO staff is now providing the consultancy and expertise to other Balkan countries.
• The REC CO Slovenia has further strengthened and developed capacity for project dissemination and communication tasks on local, national and international level on sustainable mobility and energy efficiency issues.
• The CO has helped to implement three global conventions (UNCBD, UNFCCC, UNCCD), and lent support to other environmental directives.
• CO Slovenia, together with NGO representatives, was the initiator and coordinator of the Partnership for Environment — the strategy for cooperation between environmental NGOs and the Ministry of Environment, Spatial Planning and Energy (MoE). Since 2001, CO Slovenia has implemented and supported environmental forums and other forms of dialogue
• Since 2000 CO Slovenia has supported implementation of strategic environmental assessment (SEA) in Slovenia. Several expert and public discussions were implemented, recommendations for SEA implementation were published, and the pilot SEA project was executed.
• CO Slovenia, in cooperation with recognised experts, prepared recommendations for implementation of the Aarhus Convention, and has also been introducing guidelines on public participation in SEA.

One of the most important characteristics of the REC CO Slovenia is its neutral, non-advocacy and non-partisan role. This enables CO Slovenia to maintain a central position among different stakeholders, as well as excellent relations and cooperation with all of them. CO Slovenia is known as an organisation that often brings together representatives of different stakeholder groups who might otherwise have difficulties in communicating, and facilitates effective discussions on different topics related to environmental and sustainable development. Conclusions and recommendations from such events are directly used to introduce new environmental trends in Slovenia or to better implement policies and programmes.

Projects in Preparation

• Partnership principle and approach in various proposals under EU FP7
• Green Procurement Project
• EEA Grants, Management of the NGO Fund in Slovenia by the Intermediate body
  

• LRF, Establishment of local development foundations (http://www.lrf.si/)
• CIVITAS MOBILIS (http://www.civitas-mobilis.org/)
• EFFI, Efficient Implementation of Energy Services in SMEs, Intelligent Energy Europe programme
• POLYDEV - Common best practices in spatial planning for the promotion of sustainable POLYcentric DEVelopment (http://www.polydev.org)

Related information:

Map of Slovenia

UNEP-Infoterra Slovenia: Environmental Information Section

Ministry of Environment

This page was last updated: 
May 2007

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