The City of Ljubljana has joined hands with eight Slovenian and eight Croatian towns and cities, along with six national and three Croatian organisations or companies at the CIVINET Slovenia-Croatia Network Initial Meeting that took place at Ljubljana City Hall on 25 April 2013.

The participants signed a Memorandum on the Founding of the CIVINET Slovenia–Croatia network.

The City of Ljubljana (MOL) is increasingly focused on mobility improvements in the city because we believe that this contributes to a better quality of life and ensures quality services for all our residents and visitors. Therefore we accepted and supported the initiative by the Regional Environmental Centre Slovenia to establish the CIVINET Slovenia–Croatia network, aimed at exchanging experience, good practice examples and sharing knowledge in the field of sustainable mobility. In order to spread ‘the good word’, MOL invited a range of Slovenian and Croatian local authorities, ministries, expert institutions, companies and NGOs from both countries to join efforts to find solutions to the problem of increasing road traffic.

Through their signature of this document, the local authorities and other CIVINET Slovenia-Croatia partners express their commitment to strengthening the exchange of knowledge, information and experience gained within the CIVITAS initiative to other members of the network and supporting the dissemination of information on the activities, achievements and results of the CIVITAS initiative and the CIVITAS Slovenia-Croatia network to other towns and cities in both countries and in the wider region. This aims to improve their quality of life and competitiveness. The signatories committed themselves to strengthening co-operation between the members of this network and members of the other CIVITAS networks, the European CIVITAS Forum and the European Commission, and to demonstrate the principles of the comprehensive CIVITAS approach on sustainable mobility through their mutual co-operation and co-operation with other stakeholders in the cities and other cities, public and media in Croatia and Slovenia. Members will also strive to enable and support dialogue on sustainable transport and mobility between representative of the local authorities, the European Commission, ministries, public and private R&D institutions, interest associations and non profit public service NGOs as well as interested individuals in Croatia and Slovenia. This will emphasise challenges common to Croatian and Slovenian municipalities in the field of sustainable transport and mobility.

Alongside the Cities of Ljubljana and Zagreb, the Memorandum has been signed by the Slovenian municipalities of Koper, Kranj, Maribor, Murska Sobota, Nova Gorica, Novo mesto, Ptuj and Velenje, as well as the Croatian municipalities of Čazma, Dubrovnik, Ivanić Grad, Koprivnica, Rijeka, Samobor and Zaprešič. The paper has also been signed by LPP, the Ljubljana Passenger Transport public company, the Slovenian companies BTC d. d. and Etrel d. o. o., and the research organisations the Jožef Stefan Institute and the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Science. The union has also been supported by the Association of Croatian Cities and Zagreb Holding. Naturally, it is also supported by the Secretariat of the newly established CIVINET network, the Regional Environmental Centre, Country office Ljubljana and ODRAZ – the Sustainable Community Development from Croatia.

More information on CIVINET is available at www.civitas.eu/civinet.