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VEV half-way ! > projects' progress chart

The VEV committees meeting in Milan on 29/10/99 recorded the commitment of almost the entire budget, widely varying rates of completion of actions depending on their complexity, but in any event a strong desire of the partners to pursue their common action on completion of the Terra programme.

The VEV project monitoring chart, presented in Milan, reveals an overall rate of progress approaching 50%. While certain projets, essentially studies, have been completed, others are more complex to manage and have taken longer to gather pace. The situation shown on the following pages takes into account the remarks made and adjustments proposed by the partners during the meeting. The diversity of projects, which is precisely the wealth of the VEV partnership, has also suggested a first attempt at modelling the network in terms of thematic approaches to historic canals, also establishing links with the processes of design of the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP). The proposed model is reproduced on page 8. This approach to the "tableau de bord" is comple-mentary to that of the project sheets. Although the latter (usually referred to as "fiches") remain the contractual documents between the partners, the monitoring chart aims to provide maximum legibility of the entire VEV project, an objective also underlined by the evaluation team CMA (a consultancy tied to Linköping University) in its preliminary report, presented by Frederik Samuelson.


The first chart lists the actions by geographical region, showing the degree of "transnationality" per action. The second above distinguishes actions by nature, with the accent on the way the different actions link with each other, in relation to the specific issues of historic canals. What is their future as vehicles for spatial development planning? This is the question which the partners' actions are trying to address, with somewhat differing angles depending on the context. The partnership has given rise to a whole range of reflections and initiatives, which will pose a serious challenge for the reporters at the closing conference, responsible for synthetising the conclusions! This is also the conclusion drawn by the "Terrassistance" team in its overall assessment. Comparing VEV to the other projects involving river basins, the draft report underlines the large number of individual projects, only a minority being specifically transnational in their implementation. In this context, it is the exchange of experience which will determine the success of the programme, even if numerous more or less informal transnational links contributed to the partners' reflection at the design stage, as underlined by the leading partner during the meeting. The technical "animateur" also suggested that the delays incurred on some of the projects could be explained by the need to forge a genuine cohesion at the trans-national level. In the VEV network, cohesion can only be attained through a substantial coordination effort in two languages. The International Centre for Historic Canals, for its data base on the internet, was thus the subject of a bilingual specification on which VNF consulted all the other partners before putting out the call for tenders. The reaction from British Waterways, presented by their archivist Paul Sillitoe in late December 1999, is revealing of the partnership spirit. He warmly welcomed the initiative, at the same time posing a series of practical questions which have not all been fully resolved as we go to press. In any event, it is worth noting that this is an action financed by one partner but deliberately open to the others, thus revealing a genuine effort to establish a common tool. The Terrassistance team finishes its report on a positive note: "the VEV projet found its rhythm thanks to an increasing awareness of common targets and high added value for all partners involved in learning from each other's experience; it is thus developing sustainable output. Well prepared and attended inter- national workshops and qualitative and well conceived meetings of steering and working committees on a regular basis with involvement of politicians became the uniting force of the project."