Beşiktaş Municipality Achieves European Diploma Award!

Our municipality achieved the "European Diploma" award, which is the first stage of the four-step European Award given by the Council of Europe. The award ceremony in Strasbourg, which was postponed twice due to the pandemic, was held online recently. As part of the ceremony at which successful local governments were awarded after various evaluations, there were other award winning municipalities from Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Ukraine, Portugal and Turkey.

Events carried out as part of the European Local Democracy Week, the European Mobility Week and the Europe Day, activities aimed at participatory democracy, joint projects carried out in cooperation with our international sister cities, voluntary projects, youth projects and European Union projects carried out in Beşiktaş with the purpose of popularizing European Union events were among the efforts of our Municipality that brought the European Diploma award to our City.

Europe Prize is Our Target
Emphasizing that it is a great honor to be awarded the European Diploma, the Beşiktaş Mayor Rıza Akpolat said: "The next target of the Beşiktaş Municipality is to receive the Europe Prize in order to successfully complete this process. We’re going to continue to come up with exemplary projects that will contribute to our country through our understanding of participatory democracy."

What is European Diploma Award?
The European Diploma is a prestigious award given by the Health and Sustainable Development Commission of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe as a result of the evaluations considering the twinning activities between local governments; relations, cooperations, partnerships and activities with foreign municipalities; European events and activities carried out as part of memberships to European and international organizations. The European Diploma is also the first level of the awards required in order to achieve the Europe Prize. It is necessary to achieve the "European Diploma", "European Flag of Honor" and "European Plaque of Honor" respectively before being entitled to receive the Europe Prize.