John Bachtler presented a plenary paper at the fourth 'Best Practice' Conference 'New Horizons in Graz' organised by the Region of Styria and DG REGIO on 15-17 November.
His paper on 'Knowledge and innovation for growth - challenges for Structural Funds to deliver the Lisbon strategy' considered the role of the Lisbon agenda in the new National Strategic Reference Frameworks and Operational Programmes and the likely challenges for designing, managaging and delivering programmes in the 2007-13 period.
John also participated in a subsequent Panel Discussion on the strengths and weaknesses of Structural Funds, together with EU Commissioner Danuta Hübner, Dr Wolf Huber (Austria), Dr Peter Heil (Hungary), Mr Volker Hoff (Germany) and Mr Karl-Heinz Lensch (Austria). Conference information: here