By the way: what do we celebrate today?

In 1985, Europe established 9 May as the “Day of Europe”. In this context, EU Member States and institutions organizes activities to remind the European founding call by Mr. Robert Schuman, the French Foreign Affairs Minister.

So, today, we would like to celebrate Europe with you, by retracing the European territorial cooperation’s benefices, which started in the 90’s, when the European Economic Community launched several instruments to support cross borders cooperation as such as the Interreg Programme, financed through the European Regional Development Fund. The latter, which initially aimed at reinforcing proximity cooperation, also promotes, since 1997, cooperative frameworks within areas, composed by territories from several Member States. Since then, four programme's frameworks have been developed and we are currently under the fifth programme’s framework, which has started in 2014 and will conclude in 2020. 

What about the European territorial cooperation?

The fifth Interreg framework is based on the objectives of the 2014-2020 cohesion policy and Europe 2020 Strategy. It focuses on resources concentration, procedures simplification and results-oriented approaches for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. This seven years programme has € 10.1 billion budget invested in over 100 cooperation programmes. More specifically, Interreg 2014-2020 counts on 15 transnational programmes financed with €2.1 billion budget.

What about Interreg Sudoe?

Interreg Sudoe was launched in 2000. It is a transnational cooperation programme which aims at improving citizens quality of life and guaranteeing smart and sustainable territorial development based on initiatives linked to innovation, environment, entrepreneurship and climate change within Southwestern Europe. For 2014-2020, Interreg Sudoe has €141 billion budget, which is distributed into five calls for proposals. With € 40.2 billion budget, the first call approved 36 projects currently under development. Closed on 31 March 2017, the Second Call received 357 applications, which are being evaluated. The results are expected in July in order to start the selected projects implementation at the end of the year. The Second Call has €25 billion budget whose €16 billion will be allocated to innovation and investigation projects and €9 billion to environment and natural resources efficiency.

You can consult all the EU projects financed through cohesion policy here: https://cohesiondata.ec.europa.eu/

Holy European Union!