Interreg Europe: the first call for proposals is now published

EU funding opportunities

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The Interreg Europe programme supports the exchange and transfer of experience, innovative approaches and capacity building among public authorities and other policy relevant organisations across Europe with a view to improving their regional development policy instruments including programmes under the investment for jobs and growth. This is a call for proposals for interregional cooperation projects, which gather policy-relevant organisations from different countries in Europe working together on a common regional development issue.

Building on the good practices in the participating regions and the knowledge exchange on innovative approaches, the call aims to support new solutions for the territorial challenges faced by regions and integrate them into their regional development policies. The first three years of the projects (‘core phase’) are dedicated to exchange and transfer of experience among the participating partners in order to improve the policy instruments addressed by the project. In the fourth and last year (‘follow-up phase’), the regions mainly focus on monitoring the results and impact of the cooperation.

With the aim to achieve improvements in policy tools, projects can implement pilot actions, linked to new approaches of public intervention, to assess their feasibility or transferability in a new context.

This type of action can be foreseen already in the presentation phase of the project proposal, or it can be one of the results of the core phase and therefore be proposed in the follow-up phase. Projects that do not achieve improvements in policy tools by the end of the core phase are required to produce an action plan, which will explain how the partner region will improve its policy thanks to the learning acquired by the project.

Beneficiaries can cooperate on any topics of shared relevance in line with their regional needs, as long as this falls within the scope of cohesion policy. The programme also recognises the need to concentrate resources on those policy areas that are most relevant and urgent for regions in Europe. For this reason, the programme plans to indicatively

concentrate the largest share of its budget (80%) on the thematic areas covering the following specific objectives

  1. Smarter Europe:
  • Research and Innovation capacities, uptake of advanced technologies
  • Digitisation for citizens, companies, research organisations and public authorities
  • Sustainable growth and competitiveness of SMEs and job creation in SMEs, including by productive investments
  • Skills for smart specialisation, industrial transition & entrepreneurship
  • Digital connectivity
  1. Greener Europe:
  • Energy efficiency and reduction of greenhouse emissions
  • Renewable energy
  • Smart energy systems, grids and storage
  • Climate change adaptation, disaster risk prevention, resilience
  • Access to water and sustainable water management
  • Circular and resource efficient economy
  • Protection and preservation of nature and biodiversity, green infrastructures, pollution reduction
  • Sustainable urban mobility for zero carbon economy
  1. More social Europe:
  • Effectiveness and inclusiveness of labour market, access to quality employment, social economy
  • Equal access to health care, health systems resilience, family-based and community-based care
  • Culture and tourism for economic development, social inclusion and social innovation

The following specific objectives will be covered by the remaining 20% of the budget.

  1. More connected Europe
  • Climate resilient, intelligent, secure, sustainable and intermodal TEN-T
  • Sustainable, climate resilient, intelligent and intermodal national, regional and local mobility
  1. More social Europe
  • Accesses to education, training and lifelong learning, distance and on-line education and training
  • Inclusion of marginalised communities, low-income households and disadvantaged groups
  • Socio-economic integration of third country nationals, including migrants
  1. Europe closer to Citizens
  • Sustainable integrated territorial development, culture, natural heritage, sustainable tourism and security (urban areas)
  • Sustainable integrated territorial development, culture, natural heritage, sustainable tourism and security (other than urban)

 

The programme eligible area covers the whole European Union territory with its 27 Member States. Norway and Switzerland are full members of the programme and organisations from these countries are eligible to participate in projects.

Deadline for submitting the proposals is 31 May at 12:00 CEST. More information can be found at the following link:

https://www.interregeurope.eu/next-call-for-projects

Written by: Margherita Genua

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