NALAS participated at the Advisory Board & Partners' Meeting of the Center of Excellence in Finance (CEF), in Ljubljana on September 10th and 11th. CEF’s mission as an international organization is to support capacity development for finance officials from ministries and central banks in South-East Europe through learning. The CEF presented its Learning Program for 2020 and 2021,  while its partner, including the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, European Commission and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) provided feedback and recommendations so that it is further fine tuned to the needs of the region.

NALAS presented its experience as a knowledge hub for local government development in South-East Europe, through peer to peer learning and exchange, while emphasizing the relevance of involving the local government perspective in the nationally-driven structural reforms, that impact local governments and their operations. Concrete proposals were presented and discussed on how to complement efforts and respond to the learning needs of both the national and local government levels, as they are both integrating parts of the overall public sector. NALAS and the CEF, but they both committed to continue to look up on opportunities to complement efforts and support data-driven and informed policymaking.

The participating institutions also emphasized on how their individual and joint efforts support the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This provided an opportunity to share NALAS’s efforts in the implementation of SDGs, through efforts designed to address SDG5-Gender Inequality, SDG6-Clean Water and Sanitation, SDG11-Sustainable Cities and Communities, along with SDG17-Partnership for the Goals.