BIS Workshops

• The REC is launching its business and environment workshop series this fall to promote "green" business opportunities resulting from EU harmonization and new environmental initiatives in industry. The first four workshops are tentatively scheduled as follows: Czech Republic, 30-31 October; Hungary, 13-14 November; Poland, 20-21 November; Slovakia, 27-28 November.

Board of Directors meeting Budapest, 12-13 July

• The REC's board of directors met in Budapest's suffocating heat for their quarterly meeting. On the agenda was the mid-year progress implementation report, the REC's bid for international status and long-term financial security. Also discussed was the search for an executive director to replace Stanislaw Sitnicki when he leaves next February, and the REC's participation in the upcoming Pan-European Ministers' Conference being held in Sofia, Bulgaria at the end of October.

Field Trips

• Alexander Juras, Local Office and Outreach Team Leader, visited Sofia, Bulgaria in July to help prepare for both the NGO parallel conference and the official ministerial conference to be held there in October. The REC will participate in both conferences, and information and publications will be availbale. Juras also visited Estonia to find a qualified local officer for this most northern Baltic state. The position was offered to Maret Merisaar.

Public Participation Reporters' Meeting, Visegrad, 23-25 June

• The REC's public participation program gathered representatives from every country under the REC's mandate, as well as a few well-respected experts from the West, to discuss public participation in CEE. The group discussed the soon-to-be-published Status Report on the Public Participation Practices in Environmental Decisionmaking in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the second edition of the Manual on Public Participation, also slated to be published in the near future.