Representative of WEG participated in EU Green Week - Green Cities for a Greener Future - Workshop on Green Cities in the Eastern Partnership in Brussels, Belgium. 

Green Week is an annual event focusing on the sustainable development and organized by the EU with a range of activities and debates, usually around a specific theme. In 2018 Green Week took place during 21-25 May and focused on the ways in which the EU is helping cities to become better places to live and work. Showcasing policy developments on a range of environmental challenges, it promoted participatory approaches to urban development, networking schemes, and tools for sharing best practices. Its main event took place in Brussels on 22-24 May. On 25th of May the workshop on Green Cities for Citizens’ Wellbeing in the Eastern Neighborhood was organized under the Eastern Partnership (EaP) umbrella in Brussels, back-to-back with the EU Green Week 2018.

On 22 of May, during High-level Conference “Green Cities for a Greener Future” one session was devoted to Cities Needs in Transition to a Circular Economy. The session was focused on the needs for cities to work towards a transition to a circular economy, barriers and challenges identified and possible solutions to remove them. 

During the session on Greening your city: sharing learnings from the experience of European Green Capital and Green Leaf cities, Oslo (Norway), Copenhagen (Denmark), Bristol (UK), Mollet Del Valles (Spain), Torres Vedras (Portugal) shared their experiences, lessons learned, challenges and achievements to the audience. 

On 25th of May workshop on Green Cities for Citizens' Wellbeing in the Eastern Neighborhood took place back-to-back with the EU Green Week 2018. It gave an opportunity to exchange views and experience and to discuss possible joint activities in this field. Cities need to urgently adopt circular economy principles to tackle issues such as waste management, energy use and efficiency, air pollution or water management.

On the workshop civil society representatives (from Georgia and Moldova) stressed the importance of such events and noted that they facilitate and enhance development of good practices in developing countries; since political will stays as a key driver of the city development active participation of its representatives in such events and close communication with each other will foster inter-city learning networks. They pointed out that establishing awards like European Green Capital and Green Leaf awards under Covenant of Mayors will facilitate and inspire decision makers in EaP countries to share good practices and implement innovative and sustainable measures in their cities.