On 22 and 23 March 2017 the annual conference of the european loan Programme “Interreg Europe” with the title “Europe, let’s cooperate!” took place in Malta. Interreg Europe builds on its forerunner Interreg IVC (funding period 2007 – 2013) and covers the whole European Union as well as Switzerland and Norway. The programme shall support European regions to enhance their regional policy capacities in selected thematic fields. It shall encourage policy learning between European public authorities in order to improve the performance of political measures and programmes for regional development.
In this year’s Interreg Europe conference, which was held as interregional cooperation forum, over 380 policymakers and practitioners from 28 European countries took part. Some of them are currently implementing projects, others would like to apply for projects in the current third call for applications within the fields of research and innovation, competitiveness of SMEs, low-carbon economy or the environment and resource efficiency.
Britta Schmigotzki, project manager at aconium GmbH within the team ‘Regional Development and Funding’ accompanied the German county of Northeim at the event. Based on an expert report written by aconium GmbH, the county of Northeim plans to take part in an Interreg project covering the topic “sustainable mobility in rural areas”. During the conference, speeches on content and perspective of the Interreg Europe programme, workshops on project development and consultations with representatives of the Joint Secretariat as well as possibilities for partner search and networking were offered to the participants. The county of Northeim and aconium GmbH exchanged project ideas and built new partnerships with many stakeholders responsible for the different fields of action in European regional development.
Foto oben: Thomas Jacob (Senat der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg, Senatskanzlei, Internationale Projekte) im Gespräch mit Steffen Gröbel und Stefan Wolfgang vom Landkreis Northeim (rechts).
Galerie: Die Konferenzbühne; Britta Schmigotzki (Projektleiterin bei der aconium GmbH im Team Regionalentwicklung und Förderung).