Page 50 - Ekonomija i Biznis_noemvri 2016.indd

events
vironment and so called smart cities. The former mayor
of Genoa presented the challenges they faced and it gave
specific suggestions how to approach the resolution of the
problems of the cities, indicating the opportunity to use
the European funds. Koce Trajanovski, the mayor of Skopje
attended the discussions on these issues. He indicated that state funds was formed for financing
the tram project was abandoned because it stipulated an
investment of 180 million Euros for a line with a length
of 12 kilometers where only 24 tramcars would move. In-
stead, the Administration of the City of Skopje chose the
ten times cheaper option to use electric buses whereby an
additional advantage is that excavation of streets would be who live in 67 countries in the world,
avoided.
Gideon Mark Amir from Israel presented the unique pro-
gram which his country runs for establishment of an in-
depth connection with the young people from the Jewish
diaspora who are born outside Israel. The goal was to bring 120 diverse programs have been de-
these young people to Israel, to provide them free stay of
50 November 2016
ten days, to offer them an appropri-
ate program for better introduction
to the country, whereby the feeling
of affection to the country would be
strengthened. A fund of private and
the project. What started as a kind
of a pilot-program based on a lot of
enthusiasm transformed into a mega
successful project. Several hundred
of young Jews, born outside Israel,
passed through the project. Now all
of them have some friend from Isra-
el, which creates an emotional basis
for long-term relationship with the
country. In the meantime, already
signed, and the project continues to
develop.
The panel discussion on European
and regional economic integration
was quite interesting. Livio Stracca
from the European Central Bank
spoke about the macro-economic
challenges for integration. In ad-
dition, she pointed out that in this
past period, the banks in Europe
faced with impaired conditions for
profit realization, increased regula-
tion after the global financial crisis
and exceptionally low interest rates.
Therefore they would have to reduce
costs. Riccardo Monti, president of
the company Italferr and former
president of the Italian Trade Agen-
cy, pointed out the importance of the
openness of the countries and free
trade. In his opinion, what is of vi-
tal importance is the infrastructure,
due to better mutual connection, as
well as the specialization for spe-
cific product, a particularly impor-
tant factor for the small countries.
Thereby he indicated that the physi-
cal proximity has a huge role and
he illustrated this with the example
that Italy imports more in Slovenia,
a market of two million people, than
in India, disproportionately larger
market. What attracted a lot of at-
tention was Nikica’s speech, who
spoke about the theoretical concepts