ECAD Advisory Board met in Staffanstorp, Sweden on February 10 and had a strategic planning of the coming Mayors´ conference to be held May 9-12, that preceded the meeting.
Staffanstorp Municipality is a part of Öresund region and a Southern part of Sweden called Skania, the region that is closer to Europe than to the north of Sweden. Staffanstorp is a young and enterprising municipality with 23 000 inhabitants that has been a member of ECAD since 2004.

City-twinning or cooperating internationally are important success factors in the community development, and are also taken seriously by Staffanstorp`s counterparts in Killarney, Ireland. Mikael Sandin, Mayor of Staffanstorp and Sean Counihan, Mayor of Killarney, demonstrated genuine interest as they both engaged in conference planning during these days along with ECAD staff and Advisory Board members.

ECAD Advisory Board had a short dynamic meeting with a lot of development- and policy suggestions.

A delegation of city councellors led by Sean Counihan, Mayor of Killarney talked inter alia about different ways of involving the public and youth into discussions on drugs at the coming conference, which is included in the planing by now.





Smaller cities have a lot of incommon, as well as bigger cities do, and that implies that an up-to-date comparison of drug abuse trends and municipal solutions to the problems can be of enormous value both on the local scale and internationally.

However, we cannot focus on illicit drugs only, there is an acute need to involve other aspects, alcohol abuse, parents` role, NGOs, thus sharing opinions, not excluding.

"We need to focus on how to operate together and accept each others`points of view, thus broadening the perspective. That is why we chose to talk about cooperation and a broader perspective at ECAD Mayors` conference this year", said Patrik Runesson, Strategical Analyst at Staffanstorp City Council.   

ECAD thanks Staffanstorp City Council and its Mayor, Mikael Sandin, for heartily welcome and generosity towards ECAD.