On the 8th and 9th of February 2023, the Joint Monitoring Committee of the IPA CBC Programme Kosovo - North Macedonia organized the regular 11th meeting, which was followed by a capacity building for the members of the JMC and the staff of the Operating Structures.

As per Agenda, the Meeting was officially opened by the Deputy Minister for Local Self-government, the Chair of the JMC Mr. Zoran Dimitrovski. Mr. Alban Krasniqi co-chair of the JMC, Mrs. Feride Zeka – task manager at the EU Office in Kosovo and Mr. Elvis Ali – CBC Coordinator at Delegation of EU in Skopje also had welcome remarks and wished successful meeting and training.

The JTS staff presented the Annual Implementation Report 2022 and its annexes. After a debate by the members of the Joint Monitoring Committee the following documents were approved:

1. Annual Implementation Report 2022 and annexes
2. Annual Communication Plan 2023
3. Annual working Plan 2023

Following the meeting of the JMC, the members of the Joint Monitoring Committee and the staff of the Operating Structures of the Programme had the opportunity to attend a capacity building session as preparation for the new IPA III programme for the period 2021-2027.

During the first day the topics covered during the training were: Legal framework, programming, and implementation - main changes, CBC IPA programme: main changes in the structures and next steps, Programmes update and next steps to start implementation, 7 years Financing Agreements: implications for commitments and contracting deadlines, Execution of the launched calls, lesson learned, challenges faced, preliminary results of project implementation

On the second day as per request from the previous meeting of the Joint Monitoring Committee and interest shown on the Programme monitoring, the JTS staff presented the monitoring structure of the programme which consists of: Monitoring visit/ template for reporting; Online Regional Monitoring Database and Indicators and validation. Additionally, the Rules of Procedure (RoP) of Joint Monitoring Committee meetings were reviewed and sat the basis for the IPA III Joint Monitoring Committee. For the last session of the training two existing projects financed through the 4^th Call for Proposals were invited to present the projects to the JMC and discuss on the success and challenges facing during the implementation. The projects presented were: “CBC Ecokid” implemented by Municipality of Ferizaj in partnership with Municipality of Cair and BSCK Kosovo and “Pilot interventions for wastewater treatment and solid waste management in the cross-border region” implemented by Municipality of Novo Brdo in partnership with Municipality of Gjorce Petrov.