Pavlos Kollias is a senior Economist with extensive, multi-sectoral professional experience of over 35 years in programming, strategic planning and , programme/- and project formulation. He managed and coordinated multi-disciplinary, multinational teams in the context of various capacity building programmes/projects in the areas of Regional and Local Economic Development, Cross-Border/Transnational & Interregional Cooperation, Public Administration Reform, Organisational & Human Resources Development, Employment/Labour Market and Social policies, Vocational Education & Training, Business- and SME Development.

Working internationally in the last 23+ years as Team Leader/Senior Expert in the context of a large number of EU funded (PHARE, ISPA, SAPARD, CARDS, IPA, European Neighbourhood Instrument, NDICI) projects in 14 EU candidate or associated countries in Central & Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the Neighbourhood/EaP Region. Pavlos Kollias has additional experience as Institutional Management Specialist for the World Bank in the Middle East.

An extensive international consulting career committed to:

• assessing and improving governance structures at central, regional and local levels,
• supporting the formulation of National and Sectoral Programmes and designing National and Sectoral/Regional Development strategies and policies,
• providing technical assistance and institutional capacity building support to the public administration, Central Ministries and Sectoral/Regional Agencies,
• performing functions entrusted to Managing, Paying Authorities and/or Intermediate Bodies in EU pre-accession countries and/or supporting them during the post-accession stages,
• assisting the Governments of associated countries of the EU Neighbourhood in implementing their EU Association Agreements for strengthening their administrative capacities, designing/managing the partnership building process, drafting/implementing the National Development Strategies and Programmes, Regional Development Plans and Sectoral/Regional Operational Programmes, integrating the national sectoral/regional strategic priorities with the regions’ own policy objectives, utilising their endogenous potential and comparative advantages to enhance regional and local competitiveness, and developing their respective project pipelines.

Primož Vehar is a lawyer from Slovenia, with advanced studies and a Master’s degree in Political Science focused on the organization of legal approximation in the EU accession process.

He began his career (now spanning over 30 years) in the Slovenian public administration, serving as a legal drafter responsible for organizing legal approximation and implementing the Association Agreement within the Government Office of Legislation. He also spent one year in the judiciary, during which he passed the bar exam.

During Slovenia’s EU accession negotiations, he provided legal support to the core negotiating team and worked extensively on legal approximation.
In the last two years of the negotiations, he served as Secretary of the EU Affairs Committee in the National Parliament, helping establish the Committee and implement changes to parliamentary rules of procedure in preparation for EU accession. He was also part of the team that prepared constitutional amendments and the Law on Cooperation between the National Assembly and the Government on EU matters.

His involvement across all three branches of law (executive, judiciary, and legislature) during and immediately after the accession process enabled him to transition into independent legal consultancy back in 2005, primarily supporting Western Balkan countries on EU-funded projects related to legal approximation and the organization of accession negotiations.

Primož served as a Senior Adviser at OECD/SIGMA for five years, supporting public administration reform in Western Balkan countries and Ukraine. Since 2020, he has been working in Moldova as Team Leader and Legal Approximation Expert on an EU-funded project supporting the implementation of the Association Agreement, legal approximation, and the organization of the EU accession process.

From September 2025, he holds the position of Deputy Team Leader, responsible for Institutional Reform and Legal Approximation on the EU-funded project “Moldova is Europe: Support for EU Integration.”

Klaudijus Maniokas holds a PhD in the field of Social Sciences from the University of Vilnius (for his thesis EU Enlargement and Europeanization).
He spent more than 10 years dealing with Lithuania’s accession to the EU and finished his civil service career as the Deputy Chief Negotiator and Deputy Director General of the European Committee under the Government of Lithuania.

Since 2004, as the Chairman of the board of the consulting firm ESTEP, he has led multiple consultancy and research assignments focused on European integration and development, specifically public sector reforms, EU accession management, and planning and evaluation of the EU structural funds interventions working with the European Commission services, SIGMA, EIB, World Bank and other organizations.

He has been consulting the governments of Eastern Europe and Western Balkans on these matters for the last twenty years. His most recent positions have been the Team Leader of the Support to European Integration project in Albania (2021-2024) and a Screening Expert for Ukraine2EU Program (2024-2025).

With a Master’s Degree in International Relations, Iana has 16 years of professional experience in strategic communication, being the lead of several large-scale awareness raising campaigns including at national level, high-level events, development and maintenance of public institutions’ and development partners’ web sites, development of numerous information and visibility products.

She started her career as a journalist, and since 2009 has been working for several international development partners’ projects in Moldova, among which UN, World Bank, UNDP, EU, being in charge of communication & awareness raising campaigns in fields like central public administration reform, human rights and gender equality, development aid coordination, youth policies. She also has had the experience of being Adviser and Spokesperson of the Ministry of Youth and Sports.

In 2014, Iana joined the EU High Level Advisers’ Mission as Communication Expert and has been in charge of communication of several missions since then. In 2025, she became the Key Expert on Communication of the “Moldova is Europe – Support for EU Integration” project. She also holds a degree in English and German philology.