MIRKO ranked first in competition “EU Project Done With Dedication”

Estonia has been a member of the European Union for almost two decades, and during this time more than 40,000 projects have received support from the Structural Funds for a total of nearly 7.6 billion euros. On this occasion, the Estonian State Support Services Center organised a competition for the best projects implemented with the help of EU grants, in order to give recognition to the success stories that received support. A total of 140 projects were submitted to the competition, of which the jury selected 30. The selection of projects was based on their impact and significance for the specific area, target group, region or community. The best of the best were determined by a popular vote, where the projects received a total of over 23,000 votes.

In the field of culture, the highest number of votes was given to MIRKO, the nationwide lending environment developed by the National Library of Estonia. MIRKO was launched in the autumn of 2022 and today enjoys nearly 15,000 users with more than 57,000 loans during the past year. The environment offers around 4,500 e-books and magazines and almost 300 audio books via its e-publications platform, and enables to borrow over 2 million paper books which are supplied by more than 40 participating  libraries across Estonia. One of the main goals of the platform is to make literature published in Estonia more accessible and to promote the Estonian language and culture.

The winners received their awards from Minister of Finance Mart Võrklaev on 24 November at a festive ceremony. On behalf of the National Library of Estonia the award was received by Director of Library Services Kristel Veimann and Project Manager Helina Filatova.