The EU Committee of the Regions set up a task force for Croatia so as to support cooperation between local authorities in Croatia and the EU during the process of Croatia's integration with the European bloc.
"We have presented them the process of decentralisation and informed them of our plans in this field. We also talked about inter-regional cooperation and the use of structural and pre-accession funds," Rijeka Mayor Vojko Obersnel, who was in the Croatian delegation, told Hina.
Other topics of the meeting were the principle of subsidiarity, decentralisation in Croatia, challenges Croatian counties will meet during the country's accession to the EU, and cross-border cooperation within the Adriatic Euro-region.
The participants in the Brussels event agreed that meetings of this kind should be held four times a year.
The Committee of Regions (CoR), a political and advisory assembly that provides local and regional authorities with a voice at the heart of the European Union, tackles topics from education, youth, culture, health care, economic and social cohesion, trans-European transport networks, telecommunications and power supply.
Also today, Croatian and European Commission officials, who met in Brussels, began a two-day bilateral screening for the chapter regarding regional policy and coordination of structural instruments.
The EU allocates about one third of its budget for regional policy so as to lessen the differences between developed and less developed areas.