The project “Action on Disease Eradication in the Western Balkan” (the ADEWB Project) is implemented in six different countries of the Western Balkan (WB) region (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Kosovo* and Serbia). The project main beneficiaries are the veterinary competent authorities of the concerned countries and the project purpose is to ensure that the technical capacity of the beneficiary competent authorities is upgraded to ensure favourable animal health status for the whole region over long term and enable free access of products of animal origin to the EU markets.

The project purpose will be attained through the achievement of four expected results: i) Ensure that the West Balkan countries are ready for accession to the EU from a sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) perspective; ii) Ensure capacity building of the veterinary services including the laboratories of the relevant IPA II beneficiary countries; iii) Ensure that it becomes possible to achieve official disease free status recognized by the OIE; and iv) Ensure that the region has developed a closely integrated cooperation with their neighbouring countries, both in the Western Balkans and with the EU.

The project activities were grouped in three main groups and 26 sub-activities or tasks. For the purpose of straightforward supervision of the progress, these were identified with an appropriate numbering system thus clearly identifying the “Activities”, the “Tasks” and the “Deliverables”.

The project purpose, objectives and activities were reviewed during the project inception phase. Except minor adjustments to the current policy context and findings, they were all confirmed to be relevant and achievable.

There are many national technical support projects and regional initiatives with similar objectives and activities that were implemented or are being implementing in the region. An important project mission is to establish solid coordination to avoid duplication and optimize the outcomes of the invested resources. The project will continuously communicate with all national projects in the beneficiary countries and coordinate activities where required to enchase the results.

Being a complex project implemented in six different countries, the project team will have to establish a close communication and efficient collaboration with all veterinary authorities in the beneficiary countries and all relevant technical support projects. In that regard, one of the first activity of the project in the Implementation phase will be to establish general overview of ongoing projects in the IPA beneficiary countries and set up cooperation platform of the ADEWB projects with all counterparts.

During the Inception phase, activities, tasks, deliverables including the indicative expected input by project experts were defined. However, the detailed and precise timing of the implementation of activities was not possible.

The recent COVID-19 outbreak is imposing alternative of the way of work organization applied so far. The national authorities and global health organizations recommend people to work from home to secure their health and to limit further spread of coronavirus. This situation has an impact on the ADEWB Project implementation process due to closed borders and suspended flights between countries what does not allow project experts to work from the project office premises in Belgrade and implement missions in the beneficiary countries.

Therefore, the Consortium proposes a mitigation approach where the daily work, consultations and discussions with the Contracting authority, between project experts and with the beneficiary countries will be maintained using internet-based communication tools as well as telephones throughout the period of remote working.

In light of the current Coronavirus-pandemic, the Project team propose:

• Putting an emphasis on activities that do not require on site client interaction until it is safe to return to normal operating mode again;
• Substituting face-to-face-contact between CA, Beneficiary, experts, stakeholders and the wider population through online collaboration tools and techniques.
• Continue with rigorous activity- and result-monitoring which will also cover all online activities and outputs and allow CA and Beneficiary to follow up on progress and intervene whenever required.

Such activities were identified and their implementation moved forward. This is clearly indicated in the timeline for project implementation.

When the travelling restrictions will be ceased and travelling become possible, the project will update the timing schedule presented in this report and start with the field activities.

The first Steering Committee meeting will also need to be postponed. In order to gather the comments and input from the beneficiary countries, the Inception report will be sent to all beneficiary countries and they will be invited to provide their comments and input.