A Transnational Meeting in Dracula’s Land

It was the question on everybody’s lips on a cold beginning of November 2019 in Bistrita, Romania, the meeting place of Making Spend Matter partners: Preston (UK) – Lead Partner, Vila Nova de Famalicão (Portugal), Pamplona (Spain), Kavala (Greece), Schaerbeek (Belgium) and Kozsalin (Poland). But also the homeland of Bram Stoker’s main character of his fictional novel Dracula…

At that point it was supposed to be the midterm transnational meeting in our Transfer Network, as no one could predict what was going to hit the world since March 2020, and thus the fact that all projects will benefit from a longer period of implementation. This meeting was also attended by the URBACT Secretariat representative Adele Bucella.

Our activity was carefully looked at from the Secretariat point of view, and once more was reiterated the importance of public procurement within institutions and the need to change the perspective of tackling it from different angles, different backgrounds, different legal systems, etc.

Therefore it was a very important meeting within our network, a milestone, as we had to analyse the state of the transfer so far and to set the roadmap for the ones to come. Each partner was asked to identify one particular highlight and one particular challenge associated with the Network. As the main objective of our project was the transfer of the methodology of spending analysis, we realized that all partners managed to complete the transfer, one way or another. So, the question “what happens after Spend Analysis” was raised, and decided to be tackled in a future transnational meeting.

The meeting started with the Mayor’s word of welcome, who seized the opportunity to tell a short story of the city since the medieval times, and even personally arranged for the partners to visit the Evangelical Church’s tower, as it is currently closed due to restoration works and from where they could admire the panorama of the surroundings from 76m height.

After this short break, the meeting continued with emphasis on Bistrita’s way of doing the procurement, a thorough analysis of the contextual law and what are the means to change the way #procurement is seen, as this is the main step in bringing new ideas in the rigid world of procurement. The partners were very interested in hearing in detail about our procurement process, and even requested us to send them our procedure and draft papers. So, one more transfer of good practice within the network!

As every transnational meeting has a specific topic, the one in Bistrita was related to Social and Environmental Criteria in public procurement, and the session was led by the Ad-Hoc Expert John Watt. The debates around this were animated as it is still a touchy subject for all partners involved, as not all legislative backgrounds allow for such criteria to be inserted in their procurement processes.

Indeed, not knowing what 2020 will bring, we also discussed the Final Conference of the project, that was due to happen in November 2020, sharing ideas about its format, attendees, location, etc. At this point we are hoping that we will have to opportunity to have it in the first part of 2021.

As the meeting was leaning towards the end, and all the question marks raised by public procurement were clarified, still there was one more…Dracula? Yes…Dracula. Before leaving to their homes, our guests paid a surprise visit to Dracula’s Castle in the Borgo Pass, organised by their hosts, where they saw its tomb, and for a glimpse, Dracula himself, who, we still wonder, on whose neck left his tooth marks…maybe Adele’s?

Article writted by: Cristina Cudrec, Local Project Coordinator