The 6th meeting of the Joint monitoring and steering committee (JMSC) of the CBC Programme Lithuania – Poland took place in Augustów, Poland, 14-15 December 2010. Members of the JMSC, consisting of representatives of the regional and national governmental institutions from both countries, approved the Annual workplan of the Programme for 2011 and the Annual Communication plan for 2011.

In order to facilitate validation of the expenditures incurred by the projects and ensure sufficient audit trail, The Guidelines for filling in the Declaration of validation of partner expenditure / Declaration of project expenditure by 1st level Controller were prepared and presented by the Joint Technical Secretariat (JTS) staff during the meeting. The new document gives a detailed description of the certificate itself and guides the 1st level controllers through the process of filling it. The mentioned above document will be published on the website in the nearest future as well communicated to the 1st level controllers.

6 open call projects were approved under the conditions to receive the part-financing from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) out of 17 applications submitted for the 4th call for proposals.

All 6 open call projects fall under the Priority 1 “Competitiveness and productivity growth of the cross-border region”, as the 4th call was open for the Priority 1 only. The total value of the projects approved is 9,2 mil EUR.

The main reason of the rejection of the projects during the technical assessment was the shortfall of the necessary technical documentation. The main qualitative shortcomings were very low cross-border impact indicated (level of involvement of the partner is really low or the cooperation of partners is not described sufficiently); vague feasibility of project implementation (no cost effectiveness shown, unclear links between project activities and outcomes or results, etc.); mirror activities are foreseen on both sides of the border.

Moreover, an important decision regarding the procedure of changes in the projects was approved: in exceptional cases expansion of the existing project activities by the new elements, which are necessary for achievement of the objectives of the project and/or increase of outputs and results foreseen in the project are admissible, not changing the approved total project budget, extending the project duration or adding any new activities. Such requests for changes, provided that all legal and technical preconditions are fulfilled and the change is justified, shall require a separate approval of the JMSC.

The detailed information about the decisions of the JMSC will reach the beneficiaries in the nearest future.

The list of the approved projects is available here.