The workshop held in Bogotá in mid-March closed the support itinerary offered by EUROsociAL, a programme financed by the European Union, to Colombia's National Planning Department (DNP in its Spanish acronym) in its role as the chief agency of the strategic plan for promoting and boosting territorial associative activity and integration. The goal of the support itinerary was to introduce innovations related to models of inter-agency association and cooperation between territorial institutions to allow improvement of technical capacity and capacity for managing the associative practices of municipalities and other territorial institutions. This will generate a means of rating local projects and improving services to citizens. In effect, territorial associative processes have evident importance within the framework of the new Development Plan (2015-2018) in terms of territorial development and cohesion.

The workshop in Bogotá included the participation of representatives of various divisions of the DNP, different ministries and governorates, federations of municipalities and departments, research centres and the EU delegation in Colombia. EUROsociAL presented a report with a frame of reference that, based on a comparative analysis and an analysis of the transferability of European models (particularly those of Germany, Croatia, France and Italy), contributed to the institutional policy debate on the adoption of rules of action and on improvement of the implementation of the LOOT in the chapter dedicated to regional integration and inter-municipality cooperation.

The rules address notable elements such as: (i) forms of territorial association, governance and local organisation; (ii) territorial organisation of regional development strategies; (iii) governance and organisation of territorial agreements; (iv) incentives for forms of association; (v) application of tools for participation and constitution of public-private partnerships; (vi) establishment of a system of monitoring, management, control and evaluation of associations of territorial institutions.