Summary of the 4th Monitoring Committee meeting

The 4th Monitoring Committee (MC) meeting was held on 29^th November 2016 in Senec, Slovak Republic. The main topics of the meeting was to discuss and approve the

- evaluation plan of the Interreg V-A SK-HU programme,

- the assessment manual for project selection

Both documents were approved with conditions that were clarified during the preparatory meetings before the MC meeting.

There will be a call for proposals to select the organizations that will manage the Small Project Fund in the future. The minimum requirements for the organizations have also been approved by the members of the committee. The related assessment documents like the admissibility, administrative, eligibility and quality assessment grid were also accepted.

The same types of documents were also approved related to the B-Light scheme, that will facilitate the participation of the SMEs in the Interreg V-A SKHU programme.

The Final Implementation Report of the previous Hungary-Slovakia Cross-Border Cooperation Programme 2007-2013 was also approved. The MC of the Interreg V-A SK-HU programme has authorization from the Joint Monitoring Committee of the ancestor programme to proceed and decide on behalf of them in those cases that are necessary to close the HUSK programme.  This decision was made during the closing JMC meeting last year in Sárospatak, Hungary.

Presentations were also held by the representatives of the European Commission. Mr Perti Hermannek told the members about the assessment of Interreg cross-border cooperation programmes' governance systems and their appropriateness to address border obstacles. He also made interviews with some of the MC members to collect information to this research. Mr Zsolt Szokolai, the desk officer of the programme presented the ex-post evaluation of Cohesion Policy programmes 2007-2013, and also emphasized the result-orientated approach, that the programme shall apply during the implementation in the 2014-2020 period.

There was no decision about the date of the next MC meeting. It will depend on when the evaluation of the project proposals, that were submitted during the first call for proposals, is finalized. When the ranking list of the applications is ready, the JS will present it to the members for selection decision.