Mayor of the Municipality of Stari Grad Sarajevo Ibrahim Hadzibajric and the President of the City Municipality of Stari Grad Belgrade Marko Bastac signed the Agreement on Cooperation between the two oldest municipalities in Belgrade and Sarajevo.
For the Municipality of Stari Grad, this is the 24th agreement with municipalities and cities from the region and beyond, and both mayors noted their intent for the development of mutual cooperation, especially when it comes to tourism, culture, sports and economics.
Mayor Hadzibajric noted that the EU insisted on regional co-operation as well as the cooperation on a local-level in the last fifteen years, but that practice is avoided among the ex-Yu countries.
“However, there is a great cooperation between municipalities and cities that is conducted in accordance with the European model. This is the 24th agreement on cooperation for us in the last eight years, and the second one with a municipality from Serbia. We signed the first one in Kragujevac. Our municipality, thanks to this kind of agreement, received investments in the amount of 12.5 million EUR in the previous period. We have time and the realization depends on the management of the municipality and the people who are working in it,” said Hadzibajric.
The Mayor of the City Municipality of Stari Grad Belgrade, Marko Bastac, also presented some concrete proposals on the cooperation and further strengthening of the friendly relations between these two municipalities.
“One of the first things we will be doing is connecting people in Sarajevo and Belgrade, primarily with the exchange of pupils and students of two municipalities. What used to exist, and now does not, are Bascarsija nights in Belgrade and Skadarlija nights in Sarajevo and we will revive it again,” stated Mayor Bastac.
The cooperation of these two municipalities as brother municipalities was agreed two months ago when Mayor Bastac and his associates visited the Municipality of Stari Grad Sarajevo. The official signing of the Agreement on cooperation between Belgrade and Sarajevo municipalities was attended by the representative of the Embassy of BiH in Serbia, Zoran Perkovic.
(Source: Radiosarajevo.ba)