The Swedish partners made an excellent job in promoting Regional Competence project at the CEMR General Assembly in Poznan, Poland 14-16 May. The event gathered around 800 representatives from different local and regional authorities in Europe.

Within the Stand, the Individual Competence Database was used as a means of collecting contact details of the interested delegates. These contact details will be used as a starting point to create a group of people interested in Regional Competence project.

The General Assembly also included a workshop on Education. Even though the session was concentrating on basic education, life long learning and adult education were also emphasized. Ability to make comparisons of the level of education and training between the different European countries was seen vital. Also more emphasis should be placed on adult education, including language skills, use of information technology and developing self-confidence.

CEMR General Assembly was also used as a way to launch the new Regional Competence Dissemination Internet site.

Regional Competence project was presented in the CEMR working group on employment and social policy meeting in Brussels on 26 June 2003. Italian partners, Mr Paolo Martinez and Slovenian partners, Mr Goran Zivec demonstrated their activities within the project. This was the second time the project was seeking comments from the local authority experts from the field of employment and social policy.

The chair of the working group, Mr Matthias Schulze-Böing was emphasising the need to define an intelligent framework and methods to valorise competence to create links between local development, creation of jobs, and development of the local and regional economy. He also quoted Commissioner Diamantopoulou "we have to build intelligent territories which are able to develop employment strategies, foster creativity and valorise the local resources".

It became clearer that there is a need for developing a common set of tools that can be easily adapted by local actors all over Europe. Both the methodological and technical sides are relevant in the development of these tools. Development of a EUROPEAN REGIONAL COMPETENCE TOOLKIT could be a way to give examples and instructions of how to build development strategies at individual, organisational and regional levels.