Welcome and Introduction
Jernej Stritih, Executive Director
The Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe
Ady Endre ut 9-11, 2000 Szentendre, Hungary
E-mail: jstritih@rec.org
INTRODUCTION
Mr Jernej Stritih, Executive Director of the Regional Environmental Center (REC) opened the conference by welcoming delegates and briefly summarising the history and activities of the REC since its opening in 1990. A summary and the powerpoint slides for this presentation are given below.
He also drew attention to the circulated draft of the 'Szentendre Statement', a non-binding political declaration that seeks to encourage closer collaboration between CEE Environment and Research Ministries, and the European Commission. Inviting comments to this, Mr. Stritih proposed that pending no major objections, a final text would be adopted at the close of the conference on the following day.
THE REGIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL CENTER
The REC was founded during the early stages of the transition process in CEE. Its goals and mission are to help solve environmental problems through the promotion of cooperation among environmental stakeholders, principally government, business, and nongovernmental organisations. This is achieved through capacity building activities, the exchange of information, and by encouraging public participation in the decisionmaking process. Since the REC was established, it has grown as an organisation and now incorporates 15 Local Offices and more than 150 staff. Operating at both the local and international level, with the increasing shift toward EU accession in CEE, REC is able to help facilitate the flow and exchange of information in fields such as Telematics and to foster EU-CEE cooperation. These are among the reasons for REC hosting the DETERMINE conference. The overhead slides used by Mr. Stritih are given below.
REC * PROGRAMS * TELEMATICS * DETERMINE
