As project evaluation and monitoring officer in the Transnational MED Programme, I had the possibility to work with projects on all subjects covered by the thematic objectives of the MED programme for 2007-2013 period. Many of them were related to integrated and sustainable urban development, touching its different aspects - transport, energy efficiency, renewable energies, innovative cultural development, cultural heritage etc. For four years I worked with different partnerships in the Mediterranean area and got the possibility the acquire very good general overview of the different challenges that nowadays European cities have to tackle. With projects like Texmedin and Chord I had the possibility to work on cultural heritage, approached in new angles, with Planet Design – the sustainability in design, Sostenuto – on innovative cultural management practices, with the projects ICS, Iktimed and Wide I had the opportunity to develop my knowledge on innovation, SMEs and knowledge transfer...

The exchange and learning processes at transnational level are quite often a challenge that meets more than the language barrier. High sensitivity to the culture and the needs of the others are necessary, as well as a long international experience. Many projects in the ETC world fail to accomplish the exchange or learning process they have foreseen, due to bad communication among the partners, which, in turn might result into more serious issues as lack of trust. My different roles as supervisor and leader of transnational networks, have allowed me to work on different ways to overcome the blocking points, and to extract the knowledge, useful for the tasks to be fulfilled. As project officer in the MED programme I had to learn to understand the cultural particularities and expectations of different partners in order to assist the implementation of the projects. Also, my last role in INTERACT was entirely devoted to exchange and learning processes at transnational level.