During October 11 – 12, 2023, the Faculty of Organizational Sciences, University of Belgrade hosted the participants of the international project Intergovernmental Coordination from Local to European Governance – IGCOORD. On the first day the meetings of the project’s core team (Core Group), were held while the second working day was reserved for meetings of members of working group 4 (WG4). The project is part of the COST projects, which are aimed at the development and closer connection of researchers from European institutions in the field of science and technology and is successfully led by PhD. Noemia Bessa Vilela, director of the Institute of Legal Sciences in Maribor, Slovenia.
The IGCOORD project targets to connect different fields of research to provide a systematic and comparable insight into the institutions, mechanisms, and processes of intergovernmental coordination in horizontal and vertical directions, between levels of government, policy sectors and territorial units. Namely, it strives to 1) collect comparative evidence, 2) clarify basic mechanisms and causal explanations from analytical comparison, 3) develop new common research questions and 4) disseminate collected reports and results to inform the scientific and professional public.
Meetings of the first working days in Belgrade were related to the analysis of the achieved results of the project in the previous year in order to prepare a mandatory annual reporting. Also, the steps related to the next year were defined from the aspect of research, reporting, mandatory publication, and project budget.
The second working day was focused on the activities of the WG4, which is related to fiscal decentralization. The meeting was jointly coordinated by Professor Juraj Nemec and Professor Slađana Benković. During the meeting, the responsibilities and time frame related to the implementation of activities for the next project year were defined.
On both working days, the attendees were greeted by the vice-dean for international cooperation, professor Sandra Jednak who presented the Faculty as a scientific institution, involved in numerous development, scientific and research projects that contribute to the strengthening of institutional capacities, mechanisms and procedures of domestic and international business entities operating on the territory of Serbia. She also pointed out that the Faculty strongly supports any initiative that implies internationalization and expressed the desire to continue cooperation in the future, if possible and expand the network of project participants, because that is always an added value to any research and professional success. At the same time, it is also the mission of projects that belong to the category of COST actions.
