MARRI Friends Meeting was traditionally organized on 18 May 2016 in Skopje, Macedonia, gathering the international community and Macedonian institutions.
The aim of the event was to present the one year activities of MARRI, the ongoing projects and achieved results as well as reflection on MARRI’s future activities.
Minister of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Macedonia welcomed the audience reiterating the full support towards MARRI mandate and role in the region. The representative of the Montenegrin Presidency-in-Office presented the efforts in the course of last year towards further strengthening of the Initiative, its stronger synergy with other regional initiatives and higher support of the international community to MARRI, pointing out the importance of the regional cooperation in the process of European integration of the Western Balkans.
Director of MARRI Regional Centre, Tamara Mugosa, reflected on the one year activities and projects of the Centre, providing detailed information. She pointed out that tangible results can be summarized with the following figures about what has been done by the Centre:
- 6 regional workshops organized
- 3 regional trainings organized
- 2 annual strategic meetings of the Heads of Border Police in Southeast Europe organized
- 1 international Conference organized
- 1 Agreement on cooperation with another regional initiative signed (CEI)
- 1 project implemented in the course of the last 11 months
- 1 new project partnership established with NALAS
- MARRI became beneficiary of EC project Regional support to protection sensitive migration management in the Western Balkans and Turkey financed by IPA II
- Grants collected cca. 380.000 EUR