3rd Meeting of the Europe Region TRC's and ROCB
Moscow, 27-28 January 2011
On 27-28 January 2011, the Customs Academy of the Russian Federal Customs Service which is one of the six WCO Regional Training Centres (RTCs) in the Europe Region hosted a meeting of the Europe regional WCO Capacity Building structures in Moscow.
During their 2nd meeting held in Skopje, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, the RTcs and ROCB had initiated a series of capacity development projects aiming at the establishment of better coordination procedures to achieve quality training and efficient Capacity Building activities. Five specific projects had been initiated aiming at strengthening the regional structures’ own capacities: Research Coordination; Communication and Promotion; Regional Pool of Experts; Development of Standard Procedures for regional events; as well as Regional Capacity Building Needs Collection and Assessment.
During the Moscow meeting, participants from five RTCs now reported on progress with their own capacities projects and came up with a number of interesting initiatives underlining the importance of mobilizing knowledge as a catalyst for Customs excellence. Among these, a data base of regional Customs educational institutions were discussed. The ROCB/RTC Logistics Manual for the EUR region (a Regional Course Calendar and Checklist) was presented and appraised by the participants. Networking with other Customs academies and engaging in joint research projects was another focus of the discussions.
The regional structures also agreed on producing a regional E-Journal in English to be hosted at a later stage by the ROCB website. A first (pilot) issue of the journal will be prepared by one of the RTCs and will be presented to the regional DGs during their annual Conference in Luxembourg on 29-30 March 2011. Following the presentation by the WCO Secretariat of the rationale and basic features of the new CLiKC! platform, the participants discussed the opportunities to establish a common learning platform for the EUR region to cater for regional specifics. In the meantime, work on the five capacity development projects will continue and build a basis for the definition of the regional training platform functionalities and its contents.