Thursday, July 9, 2009

Launching of the 5th edition of EU Blue Book in University of Cambodia

July 7, 2009
12:05pm

H.E. Mr. Andre Mace, British Ambassador and EU Presidency Representative, and Mrs. Michelle Labeeu, Chargé d’Affairs a.i. of the EC Delegation to Cambodia, together with H.E. Dr. Kao Kim Hourn, President of the University of Cambodia, were the speakers in this significant event of launching EU Blue Book in its fifth edition this morning from 9:00 am to 10:50 am.

By 9:20am, the conference center where the event was held was fully seated by guests and students. Because of limited space, some students who were willing to attend this event to obtain precious knowledge regarding EU couldn’t find a seat to settle themselves.

H.E. Dr. Kao Kim Hourn, President of the UC, gave his welcome remarks on behalf of a host and started the ceremony. It’s followed by remarks of Mrs Micelle Laeeu and report by H.E. Mr. Andrew Mace.

After the speeches, it came to the floor for questions and comments by UC students and journalists from Cambodia Daily and other magazines.

The ‘EU Blue Book’ is the annual report detailing the EU development cooperation activities in Cambodia, which is published by the embassies and cooperation agencies of the EU member states and the Delegation of the European Commission to Cambodia in order to provide comprehensive information on EU support to help Cambodia achieve the Millennium Development Goals, according to Mrs. Labeeu.

Personally, I find my understanding still very limited. I’ve never known what EU has done to help Cambodia. Through this meeting, I get to learn more about EU and it also encourages me to do more research on it. Actually, according to the Blue Book freely provided to UC students, under EU-Cambodia Development Cooperation, several fields have been developed—agriculture and rural area, culture, education, environment, gender, good governance and human right, health, public financial management, tourism, and trade and private sector.

To know more about EU development activities in Cambodia, go to www.delkhm.ec.europa.eu.

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