Structures
The CEI operates through various structures: – Annual Meeting of the Heads of Government (CEI Summit). – Annual Meeting of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs (MFA Meeting). – Regular meetings of the CEI Committee of National Coordinators (CNC).
The CNC, composed of representatives of Foreign Ministries of all Member States, is the body responsible for the management of CEI cooperation and the implementation of CEI programmes and projects. Meetings at ministerial as well as expert level are also convened upon the initiative of the annually rotating CEI Presidency.
Working bodies such as the Networks of Focal Points, designated in specific sectors by the governments of its 18 Member States, operate in each CEI area of activity. The CEI - Executive Secretariat (CEI-ES), is the only permanent CEI body and was established in Trieste in 1996. It provides administrative and conceptual support to the decision-making and operational structures of the CEI.
The Secretariat for CEI Projects (CEI-PS), established in 1991 at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), maintains offices both in Trieste and London and carries out investment and project-related activities.
Participation in EU programmes started in 2004, with the aim to foster territorial cooperation among CEI countries – with particular attention to the involvement of non-EU CEI Member States in EU funded projects - and to expand existing experience in CEI’s priority areas.
Financial support for the functioning of the Secretariat is provided by Italy. Another important element of the CEI is the cooperation promoted among the Parliaments of the CEI Member States or what is known as the CEI Parliamentary Dimension. Relations are also maintained among the Chambers of Commerce of the Region.
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Famous quotes containing the word structures:
“If there are people who feel that God wants them to change the structures of society, that is something between them and their God. We must serve him in whatever way we are called. I am called to help the individual; to love each poor person. Not to deal with institutions. I am in no position to judge.”
—Mother Teresa (b. 1910)
“It is clear that all verbal structures with meaning are verbal imitations of that elusive psychological and physiological process known as thought, a process stumbling through emotional entanglements, sudden irrational convictions, involuntary gleams of insight, rationalized prejudices, and blocks of panic and inertia, finally to reach a completely incommunicable intuition.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)