16th BSSSC Annual Conference

The 16 Annual Conference of BSSSC took place from Wednesday 17 till Friday 19 September 2008 (youth part from 16.09) in City of Kaunas, Lithuania. Kaunas County Governors Administration hosted the conference with more than 450 participants. The conference was carried out in close cooperation with the Committee of the Regions (CoR), the European Commission DG Regional Policy and the Baltic Sea Region Programme 2007-2013.

The main topic of the conference was "Shaping the future Baltic Sea Region - Sub-regional contribution to the EU Baltic Sea Strategy A Round table How to make the Baltic Sea Region an Accessible and Attractive place" was an important part of the conference. The conference consisted of plenary sessions, parallel sessions/round tables, panel debate and a partner search forum (project idea café) for new projects within the Baltic Sea Region Programme 2007-2013. Before the conference there was a youth seminar with 70 participants.

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Forming Sub-regional contributions to the EU Baltic Sea Strategy was the objective of our Annual Conference, and based on the results a paper will be developed and forwarded to the EU Commission has input to the strategy work. Regional and local authorities are important actors for stimulating concrete activities and initiatives. Local and regional authorities are important also for the involvement of private actors and for implementation of the EU Strategy in the Baltic Sea Region. The youth perspective on shaping the future Baltic Sea Region was given by youth participants from sub-regions around the whole Baltic Sea.