The Union of Cyprus Municipalities has participated in the Second Workshop of the Lisbon Monitoring Platform on the “Preparation of the Territorial Dialogue 2007”, that took place on 12 January 2007 at the Committee of the Regions in Brussels.

In September 2005, the Committee of the Regions (CoR) carried out a European-wide survey on the involvement of Regions and Cities in preparing the National Reform Programmes (NRPs) and in December 2005 it made an analysis of the NRPs, comparing their content against the survey findings.

Both the survey and the conclusions reached in the NRPs report raised considerable concern regarding the level of consultation and involvement of local and regional authorities in a number of Member States.

For that reason, the CoR launched -at the first Territorial Dialogue on 1 March 2006- the Lisbon Monitoring Platform (LMP) project. The LMP provides information on the local and regional dimensions of the strategy, gives an overview on the development of these local and regional dimension through an interactive scoreboard and offers a public space for discussion.

But first and foremost it aims to create a community, a community among local and regional authorities who are working on the implementation of the growth and jobs strategy and those who would like to learn more about it.

At the very beginning of the LMP, 140 Local and Regional Authorities had declared their interest to participate in the project. The Union of Cyprus Municipalities has been one of 65 such Authorities that were finally chosen to be part of the 1st wave of participants to the project with access to the platform this year.

Further information on the LMP is available on the website: http://lisbon.cor.europa.eu/