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About the BEF Group
About BEF Germany
The Baltic Environmental Forum was founded in 1995 by the Baltic Ministries of the Environment, Germany and the European Commission as a technical assistance project aiming at strengthening the co-operation aming the Baltic environmental authorities. This assistance project ended with the entryof the Baltic States into the European Union.
However, in order to keep the network active, the BEF team has founded in 2003 new NGOs in Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and Germany. The organisations are independent in legal and fiscal terms, but they form a network as the so-called "BEF Group" and have common goals and joint activities. The network character is laid down in an agreement on cooperation between all parties. According to this agreement BEF Latvia functions as headquarter of the network and the other organisations and its memebers. Since 2004 the BEF Group cooperates with the Centre of Transboundary Cooperation St. Petersburg, who became formally a member in the BEF Group in 2005. The five independent NGOs develop projects together mainly in the Baltic Sea region, which is the target region of the operations of the organisations. Each of the NGOs also acts on national level in its country however multi-country projects are predominating.
The BEF network including its German association understands itself as a network and facilitator of dialogue and as an institution for capacity building in Eastern Europe. The BEF network does not consider itself a pressure group and this approach has proven both accepted and successful in the Baltic Sea region.
