Look back
Look back on a successful project with a difficult future
Last Board Meeting of FPSC in Bucharest
Back in 2006 VEBO met representatives of Romanian Ministry of Justice and its Probation Service at a conference of CEP (Conférence permanente Europeen de Probation) in Lugano.
The two sides agreed to look for possibilities of cooperation. As early as end of December the Lotteryfund of Zürich accepted a project proposal financing the Project “Workshops for Delivering Community Service in Romania”. In 2009 the first of the planned 3 workshops opened in Brasov. Soon FPSC opened the second and the third WS in Bucharest and in Timisoara.
Unfortunately, the enforcement of the new penal code was postponed several times with the consequence that the workshops had to fight for sufficient clients.
The Romanian Ministry of Justice nevertheless asked for prolonging the project through financing it under the Swiss-Romanian Cooperation Program. On July 1st 2011 DEZA agreed to take over the financing of the workshops until June 30th of 2016. Unfortunately, the interest of the Ministry of Justice to transform the project in an ordinary means of executing Community Service in Romania proved inexistent. This forced FPSC to close down two of the workshops after the end of Swiss funding.
The Board of FPSC and the acting CEO, Alin Paun, undertake greatest efforts to save the Bucharest-Branch.
At the Board Meeting of April 25th Peter Gründler and Thomas Wüthrich from VEBO resigned from the Board whishing all the best to the remaining Board Members and to Alin Paun.
VEBO draws the following conclusions: The model “workshops for the execution of Community Service” has successfully been implemented in Romania. Real and long-term benefits however can only be achieved when support from the Ministry of Justice and the executing body is not only moral but includes also finance.