Sectors	Regional and territorial cooperation
EU Acquis Chapters	Other issues
EU funds	129 654 €
Implementation period	2011 - 2024
Categories	Civil society;  Digital ;  Gender ;  Climate action (Mouse hover to see significance)

Preliminary information exchange between Tuzla and Vukovar, their entrepreneurship development services, has shown that there are opportunities for institutional cooperation and economic collaboration between these cities which would mainly contribute to increasing competitiveness and exporting abilities of the SMEs, exchanging experience and practices between the partners and creating “soft infrastructure“, supporting SME promotion and development. At the time of project proposal, there were over 2,500 registered economic entities in Tuzla, and 1.200 in Vukovar; thirty per cent of which with focus on foreign trade activities and cross-border trade. This project seeks to strengthen the institutional and economic cooperation between the cities of Tuzla and Vukovar, focusing on development of the economic systems of the two regions and establishment of network of the small and medium enterprises in the two regions.

The project contributed to the improvement of capacities and business skills of SMEs in targeted areas. This goal was achieved based on an analysis of available capacities for providing support to SMEs and entrepreneurship (“Analysis of the available SMEs and entrepreneurial support capacity in Tuzla municipality” and “Study of the existing capacities of the supporting institutions for small and medium sized enterprises in the Vukovar-Srijem County and the City of Vukovar”) and organisation of three thematic workshops. In order to support the training workshops, 10 modules/ business packages (identified by SMEs) of support to SMEs were created in 5000 copies exchanged among project partners and distributed to SMEs/participants on SMEs trainings and to business service providers. To further strengthen the capacity of the institutions which provide services to SMEs and encourage the development of SMEs, the project strengthened capacities of 2 Centres for provision of support services: Municipal association of entrepreneurs Tuzla /RPC incubator Lipnica and VURA in Vukovar. In Tuzla, 160 m2 of 2 facilities for business incubation in RPC incubator Lipnica were renovated and occupied by new SMEs. Municipal association of entrepreneurs Tuzla is equipped with furniture and IT equipment. Furthermore, the project activities provided for effective contacts among SMEs from Tuzla and Vukovar regions and established virtual cluster of collaboration of business support service providers and business infrastructure in the cross-border are, with 30 business support service providers and business infrastructure functionally networked and signed Memorandum of understanding. Synergy with similar ongoing activities in the target areas was provided through a Joint Action Plan, as a product of joint efforts of non-formal network of 6 CBC projects.