Six years ago, Open Society Foundations Western Balkans put a simple idea on the table: solar panels on school rooftops. A feasibility study would have been a reasonable outcome. Today, the Sunny Schools Initiative spans 111 schools and 37 municipalities across the Western Balkans. Clean power generated near coal plant chimneys in Kosovo. A public enterprise turning into an energy community in Štip. Municipal savings reinvested in Elbasan. And a mayor in Bulqizë who knows exactly what extractive industry costs a community, and why the green transition must be built differently.

The green transition in the Western Balkans is no longer theoretical. It is local, practical, and already reshaping how municipalities think about development, participation, and public value.

Following the signing of the Joint Declaration at the Green Mayors Forum in September 2025, mayors and municipal teams from across the Western Balkans gathered again in Durrës on 14 May 2026 for the Green Mayors Alliance Technical Workshop. This time, the question was not whether local green transition models are possible, but how to scale them: faster, more fairly, and more collaboratively across the region.

From declaration to delivery

Talent beyond capital

Festime Mjeshtri, Mayor of Bulqizë, set the standard from the first panel. “Talent is not only in capitals. It can be found in small municipalities across this region,” she said. A municipality known for its chrome industry now has students producing solutions that cities five times its size has not thought of. Her vision went further: she proposed extending solar to the balconies of economically vulnerable families. “This would be innovative, and it would bring more income to the community.”

Ivan Jordanov, Mayor of Štip, showed what building it right looks like. Three solar school rooftops sparked classroom conversations, community forum votes, and citizen demands for more. On that foundation, Štip is now developing an energy community anchored in its public enterprise, designed to share the benefits of renewable energy broadly rather than concentrate them among those already positioned to invest.

What Bulqizë and Štip have in common is not size or geography. It is the willingness to treat the energy transition as a civic project, not a technical one, and to put community participation at the center of decision-making.

Why this matters for democracy

Dritan Nelaj, Team Leader for Twin Transition at OSF-WB, placed the day’s discussions in a wider context. Energy democracy, he said, is what happens when citizens have a meaningful say in how energy is produced, owned, and shared, and when the benefits of that energy reach the communities that host it. “Sunny Schools show what energy democracy looks like in practice: schools as producers, communities as participants, and savings reinvested where they are generated. In that sense, energy democracy delivers.”

That framing carried into the afternoon, where participants moved from individual experiences to shared priorities for the Alliance.

Three priority directions

By the closing session, three priority directions had been agreed:

• Finish what was started, ensuring renewable energy solutions reach every school, including in rural and underserved communities.
• Expand the model beyond school rooftops, into waste management, water systems, urban mobility, and air quality.
• Replicate the participatory approach that made the initiative work, with youth, parents, and local communities as participants in the solutions, not spectators.

A regional space to exchange, coordinate, and act

Participants were equally clear about how the Alliance itself should function. As Miloš Čolić from Pirot put it: “We need results. We need to be mobile and respond fast.” The Alliance is taking shape as a regional space for mayors and municipal teams to exchange experience, coordinate across borders, and act together where acting alone is harder. It is designed to complement what municipalities are already doing by adding regional reach to local ambition.

The workshop also opened the conversation on digital tools and joint capacity. Shared digital platforms, peer training, and collaborative project development were discussed as ways to strengthen the Alliance’s collective ability to engage with EU funding instruments and regional partners.

A regional model of democratic local governance

What became clear across the day is that the Green Mayors Alliance is becoming a new regional model of democratic local governance. The future of the green transition in the Western Balkans will not be shaped solely in capitals. It will be shaped on rooftops, in council sessions, and in the daily decisions of mayors who treat their citizens as participants in solutions, not as spectators.

That is what happened in Durrës on 14 May.