In 2011 the embassy received and processed a total number of 355 project applications; 47 of these applications were accepted; 10 approved to be agreed for the Embassy Fund 2012 and 298 applications were rejected.
Following the guidelines of the Western Balkan Section at the Ministry of Foreign affairs in Oslo, the embassy decided to prioritize (but not to be limited to) the following areas in 2011:
1. Human Rights.
2. Security Sector Reform
3. Gender Equality.
Human Rights and Security Sector Reform projects were well represented in the portfolio (28 and 25% of the available budget respectively), while Gender Equality was not supported to the desired level (4%), due to lack of good project proposals within this area. Other areas supported were entrepreneurship (12%), environment (10%), culture/friendship activities (7%), spatial planning (5%), policy influencing/advocacy (4%), youth activism (3%) and education (3%).
The embassy was first allocated 5 MNOK. In June it was decided to add 2 MNOK more. Due to capacity reasons because of the SCS programme introduction, the embassy did not manage to spend all the funds during 2011 (1.056.635 NOK remained). However, 10 projects of total value of 1.384.300 NOK have been committed to be agreed early in 2012.
You can find more information in the report on Serbia and Montenegro Embassy Fund 2011