CEF to Become an International Organization

The process of changing the CEF’s legal status is culminating with the signing of the Agreement on Establishing the Center of Excellence in Finance as an international organization. The signing ceremony will be held on September 3, 2013 in Bled, Slovenia back-to-back with the annual Bled Strategic Forum.

The new legal status will enable easier access to donor funding and hiring of international and regional experts. The proposal to change the CEF’s status was endorsed by its Supervisory Board in 2011. Since that we have together with our members worked intensively to make this new status a reality. We have achieved considerable convergence among CEF member states on the wording of the Agreement and are now ready to sign its final version.

The Agreement establishes the CEF as a non-profit international organization based in Slovenia. It includes the standard provisions for international organizations, while allowing some degree of freedom for further specifications in the Headquarters Agreement between the CEF and the host country, and in the implementing acts to be adopted by the future Governing Board.

Signatories to the agreement will be government plenipotentiaries from respective member countries, most likely ministers of finance. Governors of central banks of CEF member countries will join the signing ceremony as well.

On this occasion the CEF will also organize the annual meeting of the CEF Advisory Board, a representative body of the CEF’s donor partners, which will take place on September 2 in Bohinjska Bistrica, Slovenia.

About the Bled Strategic Forum

Over the past seven years, the Bled Strategic Forum has grown into a successful platform for high-level strategic dialogue among leaders from the private and public sectors on key issues facing Europe and the world in the 21st century.

Welcoming prominent guests from Europe and beyond, the Bled Strategic Forum has established itself as an important annual gathering, aimed at making commitments for the implementation of new strategies designed to confront the most pressing issues of today’s Europe and the world.

Organized jointly by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia and the Centre for European Perspective, the Bled Strategic Forum is one of the leading international conferences in the region.