Besides EuroIndia Fora and Summits, the need was felt to organize ramp-up or follow-up missions to these events or topic-specific missions by Indian Partner-cities/regions to their European counterparts and vice-versa, as we strongly believe that seeing is believing.

In coordination with our Indian Partner, the Confederation of Indian Industry, we resolved to undertake such turn-key missions.

The first such mission was organized on 10-16 October 2007, whereby Ahmedabad, Kolkata and the State of Goa visited Lyon, Frankfurt and La Rochelle to review their best practices in four priority sectors identified in the preceding EuroIndia Goa Forum, namely city heritage conservation, water supply and sanitation, solid waste treatment and urban transportation.

A second mission involved member city Ahmedabad visiting member cities Valladolid and Halle to sign a partnership agreement in October 2008. This was immediately followed by the Valladolid Mayor s official visit to Ahmedabad in December.

In the wake of the 3rd Valladolid EuroIndia Summit on 4-6 October 2009, the Centre organized an extension to Madrid and Paris for the powerful official Indian civic and corporate Summit delegation.

Subsequently, a stand-alone Indian mission was undertaken In June 2010 to Val de Reuil, Paris, Barcelona, Madrid and Valladolid on "Affordable housing".

Prior to the following 4th EuroIndia Summit held in Halle (Germany) on the 10-12th of October 2010, the Centre organized an Indian mission to Open Days in Brussels, Leuven, Lille and Paris from the 3rd to 9th of October 2010, with emphasis of field visits illustrating the Summit theme of "City Vision: Reinventing Dynamic and Sustainable Cities".

Another such mission is planned from 6th to 11th of October for the Indian civic delegation that is slated to take part in the 5th EuroIndia Summit to be held in Leuven on 13-14th October 2011. This mission is slated to stop in some of the following European cities for field visit and technical presentations to illustrate the Summit theme of "Smart, Sustainable and Innovative Cities": Geneva, Grenoble, Lyon, Montpellier and/or Eindhoven.

It is expected that such path-breaking missions will lead to further exchanges of technical and topic-specific missions, to richer exchanges in the ensuing events and to actual co-operation programmes and contractual engagements, involving all concerned city stake-holders: cities, regions, states, companies, research and academic institutions, NGO s, etc.