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.

Members of CoR delegation back Albanian accession to EU, but stress need for sustained improvements.

Sustainable development and coherent, fair and transparent reform of human-resources management will need to be central concerns for Montenegro's mayors well beyond the country's possible accession to the European Union, local and regional leaders from the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) told their Montenegrin counterparts on 18 October. Demands made by the EU are not just pre-conditions, they said, but reflect a basic reality that local and regional authorities within the EU need constantly to adjust policies and procedures to serve local needs.