Brussels, 29/05/2002 (Agence Europe) - 600 representatives from the 13,000 towns twinned in Europe gathered for their congress on 22-24 May in Antwerp. After debating the role and development of twinning and sharing experiences, delegates and those in charge of twinning adopted a final declaration in which they highlighted several dimensions involved in twinning: economic co-operation and sustainable development; educational co-operation and training exchanges. They also mentioned other towns in Europe that were going to join the twinning scheme. Towns that have been twinned also expressed their worries that the Commission had proposed a subsidy of EUR 7 million for 2003 for twinning in Europe, where as the subsidy for 2002 had been EUR 12 million. The towns involved in twinning are worried that, "Given that the increasing number of twinning now include towns from candidate countries" this proposal is in contradiction with the perspectives of enlargement and are requesting support from the European Commission. Subsidies for twinning were created in 1989 on the initiative of the Parliament. The Commission has stressed that the Parliament usually receives a subsidy higher than that proposed in the Commission's draft budget. The congress was organised by the Council of European Municipalities and Regions CEMR in co-operation with Antwerp town council and the European Commission.
During the congress the European Commission awarded "gold stars" for rewarding "the best ten twinning projects" of 2001. The stars were awarded to: the twinning committees of Puy-de Dôme for having jointly organised the "European twinning day" in Cournon; Egiros in Greece for a meeting between the municipalities of Kesan and Edirne in Turkey and Topolograv Bulgaria; Oxford for having organised the "International Christmas Youth Festival" with the towns of Bonn in Germany, Leiden in the Netherlands and Grenoble in France; Chieti in Italy for having organised a conference on environmental issues, together with the towns of Barcelona and Malmö; the Spanish town of Toro in partnership with Condom in France and Grünberg, Germany for organising a five day conference on health, the labour market and the information society; the Irish town of Skerries for school exchanges with the French town of Guichen in Brittany; the Swedish town of Borlänge for having invited Czech citizens from Prostejov in participating in exchanges on the theme of "towards a Multi-cultural Europe"; the Dutch town of Sint-Michielsgestel for an education meeting with the Polish town of Buk; the Polsih town of Sepopol for its project on "the twinning of small towns as an essential factor in supporting European integration at a local level", which was organised with Lagerdorf in Germany; the Lithuanian town of Panevezys, for having organised the "International Children's and Youth arts Festival in Panevzys".