Projects and Programs
MATRA project
Ministry’s of Interior Communication Strategy for supporting Bulgaria accession process to the EU
Netherlands’s governmental programme MATRA for Bulgaria accession to the EU, started in the beginning of 2003. The programme was proposed by the Embassy of the Netherlands in Sofia. Project partners are the Dutch governmental organization Senter and Bulgarian Ministry of Interior. The POPRD is beneficiary. The executive bodies are Span Consultants /The Netherlands/ and PR Point /Bulgaria/.
The main aim of MATRA project is preparing and implementing the Ministry’s of Interior Communication Strategy to help Bulgaria’s joining process to the EU. The core objective is enhancing the administrative capacity of POPRD to inform public:
- of the negotiations on EU accession achievements
- of the Ministry integration initiatives and events
- of the oncoming results of membership in the Union
The significance of MATRA’s project is growing up these days because of the necessity of presenting positive messages to Bulgarian society and making popular the progress of accession negotiations on Chapter 24 “Justice and Home affairs”. Implementing the project objectives will facilitate the detecting all the “hot issues” of joining process and sending positive messages to public for the post-membership effect.
The implementation of the project under the Dutch governmental programme MATRA “EU communication strategy of the Ministry of Interior of the Republic of Bulgaria” was finalized
The project is under the MATRA pre-accession programme of the Dutch government and was proposed by the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Sofia. It started in the beginning of 2003. Partners in the project are the Dutch governmental agency Senter and the Ministry of Interior. Today was the closing seminar under the project.
Today was the closing seminar under the project “EU communication strategy of the Ministry of Interior of the Republic of Bulgaria”. The project is under the pre-accession programme of the Dutch government MATRA and was proposed by the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Sofia. It started in the beginning of 2003. Partners in the projects are the Dutch governmental agency Senter and the Ministry of Interior. Beneficiary of the project is Press Office and Public Relations Directorate of the Bulgarian Ministry of Interior, and the contractor is the Dutch company SPAN Consultants and its Bulgarian partner PR Point.
In the context of the implementation of the project objective – the elaboration of the EU communication strategy of the Ministry of Interior of the Republic of Bulgaria, there were lots of initiatives, related to informing the Bulgarian public about the progress of the negotiations, popularizing all the positive changes related to our accession to EU. The fulfillment of the objectives of the project facilitated the formulation of so-called hot news in the area of EU integration, and especially in connection with the negotiations under Chapter 24 “Justice and Home Affairs”.
A total of four seminars for the all of the POPRD staff were organized and implemented on a national level in the framework of the project. The main topics were related to the challenges of the EU integration in the framework of MoI. Three regions in the country were selected as “pilot regions” – Bourgas, Blagoevgrad and Rousse. In these towns lots of initiatives were implemented, with the aim of partly testing project results. A specialized section on EU integration on the Internet site of MoI was another initiative in the framework of the Bulgarian-Dutch joint project. In the internal MoI computer network a special “virtual room” was created, to which all POPRD officers have access, in order to read documents, studies and analyses, examples of their colleagues’ work, and also to discuss criminal cases in real time in the forum of this “room”.
The project under the MATRA programme also provides for technical equipment for facilitating the daily work not only of the regional spokespersons and the spokespersons of the national services, but the administration in the Press Office in Sofia, as well. 32 computers with software were bought in September 2004, and a laptop and a multi-media projector will be supplied within a week.
The Deputy Minister of Interior Mr. Boyko Kotzev and the Deputy Head of Mission of the Royal Netherlands Embassy in our country Mrs. Carmen Gonzalves were invited for the closing seminar. Among the guests were also Directors of National Services at the Ministry of Interior, representatives of MoI and Donor Programmes Directorate at the Ministry of Economy, and of the European Commission Delegation, pre-accession advisors of the MoI, as well as heads of other institutions’ projects.
The framework, aims and results of the project and the new challenges that the MoI is facing as far as communication is concerned in the context of the fulfillment of our country’s commitments, according to EU requirements, were introduced by Mrs. Sonya Momchilova, Director of the Press Office and Public Relations Directorate and Mr. Rutger-Jan Schoen – leader of the project and manager of SPAN Consultants.
The Dutch experience in using public relations in order to enhance public security was presented by Mr. Wout Dekker, Director of the Communication Unit at the Regional Police in Utrecht.
Updated on at Wednesday, June 13, 2007
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