Our transnational partnership involves four national Partnerships from France, Italy, Portugal and Hungary.
Each of those national DPs counts among its promoters public and private organizations, which has significant experiences in vocational and education intervention policies and in transnational co-operation activities.
The features of our partners ensure / provide the know-how which is necessary in order to achieve the objectives of our project.
Transnational co-operation in EQUAL
Transnational co-operation is integral to EQUAL, because it provides unique added-value for Member States and European policy-making.
Key objective of transnational co-operation is learning through promoting and transferring know-how and good practice between partnerships and between Member States.
All EQUAL DPs must therefore participate to transnational co-operation as an integral part of their national projects.
Searching for transnational partners
After obtaining approved from the relevant national Authorities, each work project submitted by the national DPs (Development Partnership) shall detail how the same intend to obtain added-value from the co-operation with overseas DPs and what kind of added-value the same are aiming at.
On the basis of the above description and aims, the national DPs shall focus on planning transnational co-operation and allocating human and financial resources to the search for overseas partners.
Each DP shall identify specific priorities referring to the transnational co-operation and outline a preliminary ideal profile of potential transnational partners; in addition, each DP shall ensure said profile matches in-house aims concerning the transnational co-operation in addition to the national project aims.
This preliminary groundwork provides each DP with the tools required to make concrete progress in the identification of transnational partners with whom to establish a co-operation.
The main search tool is the Equal Common Database ( ECDB ): it collects records of all DPs selected under EQUAL:
- it describes the profile of each DP
- it gives informations about all EQUAL projects and
- it gives the contact information and profile of each DP
By consulting the ECDB, each DP shall be able to make a preliminary selection of potential partners and enter into contact with them by telephone, fax and email and, eventually, in person.
Indeed, this reciprocal selection process shall lead to the identification of one or several prospective partners; one or more meetings shall then be organized to enable the parties to get to know each other and to collect detailed and comprehensive information about the projects in which each national DP is involved in order to assess the diverse working methods in person.
The selection and fact-finding process shall terminate with the final identification of the transnational partner and with the joint drafting of the Transnational Co-operation Agreement, which represents the formal and material base of the future co-operation.
Our fact-finding process
Once the preliminary search for transnational partners had been concluded and each party has selected its potential partner, on Friday the 5th March 2005 our four national DPs convened in Paris at the headquarters of CNA-CEFAG, the project leader of the French “Phoenix” project.
On this occasion, several representatives from each Development Partnership were present: we were able to get to know each other, to introduce our projects and to discuss the expectations and aims of each DP in relation to the transnational activities carried out by EQUAL.
On the basis of the results obtained on that occasion, we identified a number of lines of action, vectors and common aims which would form the basis of our future co-operation and, in particular, of the first stage of our transnational co-operation: drafting Transnational Co-operation Agreement and the signature of the Development Partnership Agreement (DPA) of which the TCA constitutes an integral part.
The TCA
The Transnational Co-operation Agreement initialed on the 23rd March 2005, is a formal deed regulating our co-operation: the TCA provides a detailed explanation of the SS-K-EE – our common project – and provides a record of our joint undertakings, our aims, the areas of co-operation, the activities scheduled and the expected outcome of the programs.
We shall co-operate for approximately 24 months (from June 2005 to June 2007) and implement numerous activities which, on the one hand, will enable us to obtain added-value for out national projects by exchanging experiences and know-how and, on the other, will produce significant results at community level.
