11th Meeting of the Joint Monitoring Committee of the IPA CBC Programme MK-AL 2014-2020

On 19^th of October 2021, in Bitola, North Macedonia, the Joint Monitoring Committee held the 11^th meeting under IPA II CBC Programme North Macedonia – Albania 2014-2020. In this meeting, the most important topics discussed were related to: (1) the status of the strategic project idea “Ohrid Lake – Bridging two countries towards one destination”, for the strategic vision under IPA III financial perspective; (2) the introduction, discussion and provision of advisory opinion on the operations suggested to be funded, 3rd call for proposals. For the first topic, the JMC had agreed that both OSs should commit themselves by providing and fulfilling the conditionalities (bilateral agreement/legislation, environmental impact assessment) by the middle of the next year (2022). The revised action plan and time schedule to be prepared by the OSs and submitted to DEU with all steps for 5 months with meetings with institutions and actions to fulfill the conditionalities.

For the second topic, it was agreed that the JMC members will send the advisory opinion on the list of operations selected under the 3^rd call for proposal that was distributed on the JMC meeting, via the written procedure. On 2^nd of December 2021 the advisory opinion on the list of operations selected under the 3rd call for proposal had been submitted officially to the Delegation of the European Union to North Macedonia.