World Water Week in Stockholm

Launched in Johannesburg at the 2002 World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD), the EU Water Initiative (EUWI) is a concerted effort of the European Commission, the EU Member States, partner countries and other stakeholders including civil society, the private sector and local government to work together to accelerate progress to achieving the water and sanitation MDG targets. The EUWI is working to reinforce the political commitment to water and sanitation, to create a strong and integrated framework for EU action.

The EU Consensus on Development, agreed in 2005 between the EU Council, the EU Parliament and the Commission, recognises the EUWI as contributing towards agreed EU policy objectives in water and sanitation. The Joint Africa-EU Strategy, signed in Lisbon in December 2007, has reconfirmed the objectives of the EUWI in Africa and called to further develop the existing EU-Africa Partnership on Water Affairs and Sanitation. The European Neighbourhood Policy Action Plans (ENP) promotes participation by ENP partner countries in the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe Caucasus and Central Asia (EECCA) components of the EUWI. The Latin American - EU strategic Partnership on Water and Sanitation Affairs was agreed on during the World Water Forum in 2006.

The annual EUWI Multistakeholder Forum is an open forum to debate the EUWI, comment on its performance and strategic choices. Organised by the EC, the forum will consist of two half-day sessions to review progress during 2007 and to discuss and endorse proposals on strategy and work programmes at regional level. The first session consists of the presentation and discussion of the annual report on the activities of the different components of the initiative, in particular the 4 regional components in Africa, EECCA, Latin America and the Mediterranean. It will also present and discuss achievements of the ACP-EU Water Facility around specific objectives (support to governance, capacity building and IWRM, development of partnerships) and share ideas for future development of this type of dedicated instrument within an integrated framework for action.

Chair: European Commission
Discussion Facilitator: Paul van Koppen, IRC, Netherlands

09:00	Welcome and Introduction: European Commission • Opening Statements by: Mr. Olivier Lacroix, First Counsellor, Embassy of France, for the French Presidency of the European Union and Ms. Karin Lexén, Director, Swedish Water House • The Way Forward – Activities of the EUWI • The EUWI Secretariat on the Annual Report for 2007 and The Leads of the Components of the EUWI on their Forward Strategy and Work Plan • Discussion
	Coffee Break
11:00	Achievements of the ACP-EU Water Facility Representative of the Water Facility Unit, EuropeAid, European Commission, Belgium
	Discussion
11:50	Conclusions and Wrap-up
12:00	Close of Morning Session

Seminar Programme Part 2: 13:30-17:00, Room T5

In several regions the EU Water Initiative has used the national dialogue process as an instrument and platform for engaging with the water sector in partner countries. These experiences will be presented and shared by different working groups (WGs). Recently, SIWI has been assigned to execute an evaluation of the Country Dialogue (CD) processes that were applied in Africa, as part of the activities of the Africa Working Group in the period 2005-2007. As a result of this study, recommendations for a modified CD process will be made. In this session, SIWI will present the provisional ideas for discussion with the stakeholders, as input during the on-going study.

In 2007, the Africa Working Group has started an exercise called “the mapping of aid from Europe to Africa”. The objective of this mapping exercise is to obtain an overview of current and future EU donor investments for water supply, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and IWRM in Africa. The survey for this mapping exercise was sent to all member states of the European Union and to the European Commission.

This exercise was done in collaboration with the UN Global Annual Assessment (GLAAS) Report, which main objectives are: to set out external support agencies future commitments and whether past commitments have been met; to increase accountability and transparency of external support agencies; to provide inputs to the combined “authoritative” data and information repository. The results of this survey will be presented in this session. The draft results will be shared and discussed and the final report will be made available shortly after the WWW.

Chair: European Commission
Discussion Facilitator: Paul van Koppen, IRC, Netherlands

13:30	Welcome and Introduction European Commission
13:40	The Country Dialogue Process: Presentations by the Working Groups of the Regional Components of the EUWI on the Experiences of the Country Dialogues (CD) in Africa and in Eastern and Central Asia, Mediterranean and Latin America, Followed by a Presentation by SIWI on Ideas for a Modified CD Approach, followed by a Plenary Discussion: • Experiences with Country Dialogue processes in the EECCA region • The Country Dialogue process in several African countries • Experiences in other regions, Mediterranean and Latin America • Ideas for a modified Country Dialogue process Manfred Matz (SIWI) • Plenary Discussion
	Tea Break
15:15	Results From the Mapping of Aid Exercise and the UN-GLAAS report • Presentations by IRC on the results of the mapping exercise and by WHO on the GLAAS report • Introduction Peregrine Swann, UK, co-chair of the African Working Group • Draft Results from the Mapping of Aid Study Catarina Fonseca, IRC, the Netherlands • Results from the GLAAS report Federico Properzi, WHO, Switzerland, Discussion
16:50	Conclusions and Wrap-up
17:00	Close of Seminar