1. A New Concept for Town Twinning: Linking Europe and Asia Frederick Cutajar Mayor Santa Lucija, MALTA

2. Concept of Twinning From understanding one another to network of citizens. Twinning provides the opportunity to:  find out more about the daily lives of citizens  to talk to them and exchange experiences,  to develop joint projects on issues of common interest  http://ec.europa.eu/towntwinning/index_en.ht ml

3. Current Practices in Twinning Activities Focus on Europe Other types of twinning activities? Is it time to expand and extend our links beyond the European borders?

4. Our Experience Twinning agreements with Asia and Europe  Jin Chang – Municipality of Suzhou  Sicily (LOI) to be finalised in Dec What have we learnt? Major achievements Main difficulties The future

5. What have we learnt? Existing need that other regions work more closely with Europe Cultural dialogue – way of life Opportunities

6. Major Achievements Infrastructural embellishment of the area – Garden of Serenity  Input of workers from China  Raw material  Technological transfer and know how – exchange of ideas between workers new skills Links for our business communities (tangible)

7. Difficulties Travel Costs Linguistic Food

8. The Future Maximising the current twinning  Working on a local regional and international level on EU funded activities such as Asia Invest Making concrete proposals to the EU for extending its twinning policy

9. Thank you