The Committee of the Regions' (CoR) CIVEX commission organised a seminar on "Local democracy and good governance" whose main conclusions were that local and regional authorities have an active role in ensuring transparency in the public sector and tackling corruption, thus achieving good governance and sound administration for their citizens.

The seminar on "Local democracy and good governance" organised in Dubrovnik, Croatia, from 21–22 June by the Commission for Citizenship, Governance, Institutional and External Affairs CIVEX from the Committee of the Regions' (CoR) gathered together local and regional authorities to share experiences of EU Member States and Croatia on local self-governance and share lessons learned from projects to support good governance at local and regional level.

Among other things, at the seminar, representatives of local authorities shared experiences about methods of preventing corruption that have been successfully implemented at local level. For example, Doris Šajn, Head of Cabinet of the City of Rijeka (Croatia) presented some of the measures her city had taken to enable it to be recognised as “the most transparent city of Croatia”.

This seminar marks the first time since the Accession Treaty was signed that a standing body of the CoR has held a meeting in Croatia signalling the CoR's political will to cooperate closely with Croatian local and regional authorities ahead of the country’s accession to the EU.