On March 9, at the Central and Eastern European Service Center Awards (CEE Awards) the city of Kaunas received another honorable evaluation. It was nominated in the Emerging City of the Year category. Kaunas has been included among the fastest-growing cities in Central and Eastern Europe for several years, once again testifying to the success of a consistently implemented strategy.

These are the 11th Central and Eastern European Shared Services and Outsourcing Awards which aim to highlight the importance of the business service center sector. Hundreds of enterprises, companies, organizations, and municipalities from the entire region participate in them and seek prestigious evaluation. This year, 101 finalists were selected, seeking recognition for the development of the service center sector in 27 categories.

The winners of this competition are chosen by public voting, which determines 1/3 of the final decision’s votes. The remaining two-thirds of the votes go to a special commission, which chooses the winners during a live meeting/discussion. The commission consists of about thirty members representing businesses, public institutions, and organizations from Eastern and Central Europe including Lithuania.

This year, Kaunas competed with two other nominees in the Emerging City of the Year category: the second-largest Slovak city of Košice and the Polish city of Rzeszówin, which won the award.

“Neither our participation in these awards nor the evaluation are accidental. Kaunas really pays a great deal of attention to the development of service centers and makes efforts, for which we have been recognized with nominations and victories on an international scale. I think that in this way we become not only even more visible but also receive a kind of encouragement from experts in the business community, inspiring us not to stop and move forward with new strength,” Tadas Stankevičius, head of VšĮ Kaunas IN, which creates Kaunas’ business environment and takes care of international visibility, says.

Kaunas’ achievements in the Central and Eastern Europe Shared Services and Outsourcing Awards have been noticed and appreciated for many years. The city has been nominated and awarded in various categories, not only for the title of the Emerging City of the Year but also for University and Business Cooperation of the Year or Fastest Growing Business Service Center of the year.

This year, Kaunas was also highly rated in the international Financial Times ranking of European Cities and Regions of the Future. At the end of February, it was announced that Kaunas was awarded the TOP spots in the category of Small European Cities for its business friendliness and foreign direct investment strategy.