Turkey would like to increase its participation in cross-border programmes and to see an upgrading in relations between Turkey and the European Committee of the Regions, Faruk Kaymakci, Turkey's Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs and Director for EU Affairs, told local and regional politicians from the European Union and Turkey on 27 November.

Council of Europe and EU advocate use of innovative democratic tools to help Mostar as court orders Bosnia-Herzegovina to enable elections in southern Bosnian city.

The European Union should deepen relations with neighbours on its eastern borders through more localised and targeted engagement, local and regional leaders from the EU and its partner countries have said. In two separate reports adopted on 12 September, they advised the EU to increase its support for small cross-border projects designed to increase community contacts and to establish a public-administration academy for local and regional civil servants from the six Eastern Partnership countries: Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia.

Extra support for cooperation between border communities and for the developments of local administrations would add significantly to the value of the European Union's maturing relationship with countries on its eastern borders, leading members of the Conference of Regional and Local Authorities for the Eastern Partnership (CORLEAP) said when they met in Yerevan on 28 March. They also emphasised the centrality of decentralisation to ongoing reforms intended to find an effective and democratic balance of power in the region.