How cross-border cooperation projects are dealing with the current restrictions.
aconium is involved in numerous European cooperation projects in which cities and regions are working on solutions to common challenges in the areas of digitalization, mobility, energy and education. Mutual exchange is at the heart of these projects. Currently and in the near future, events, working meetings and other activities cannot take place as planned. This poses challenges for the partnerships. How are the projects dealing with this situation?
Regulations of the funding programs
The joint secretariats of the funding programs are supporting the funded projects in the current situation with a number of flexibility and goodwill arrangements. For example, the Interreg programs in the North Sea region and the Baltic Sea region offer the opportunity to apply for a six-month extension of the project duration if essential project results are severely delayed due to the effects of the corona pandemic. Regulations on the signing of documents have also been adapted in part so that digital signatures are also accepted for reporting and auditing purposes. “To ensure that the projects achieve their planned results, the Managing Authority / Joint Secretariat will act flexibly and accommodatingly in the current situation,” the Interreg Baltic Sea Region Program website states in summary.
Ability for online meetings
As in all areas of society, the project partners of European cooperation projects are now increasingly relying on online meetings and digital collaboration. While this was already part of everyday life for many project partners before COVID-19, many of them are now trying new formats and tools and learning about new possibilities. The funding programs are also providing support through various offers. An Interreg Europe webinar entitled “Host your meeting online“, which had been planned for some time, was met with great interest from more than 400 participants at the end of March – around ten days after the lockdown began in most European countries.
New opportunities for digital participation
Partners of projects that place a particular emphasis on participation and co-creation are currently having to change their plans. The Interreg Baltic Sea Region projects LUCIA and GreenSAM, supported by aconium GmbH, had planned participation processes at various pilot locations that now also have to move into the digital space. This is a particular challenge when the target group, as in the GreenSAM project, is the generation aged 60 and older. However, initial experiences from the cities of Hamburg, Riga (Latvia) and Porvoo (Finland) involved in the projects show that the crisis also offers the opportunity to get creative, further develop digital formats and expand their own toolbox of participation instruments – for now as well as for the time after the pandemic.