On November 19, representatives of more than ten ongoing Interreg projects from Lower Saxony met in Lüneburg to exchange experiences. The meeting was organized and moderated by the Lüneburg Office for Regional Development. Dr. Monika von Haaren from the Lower Saxony Ministry for Federal and European Affairs and Regional Development was also present.
Positive and negative experiences from the various Interreg projects (including Interreg NSR, Interreg BSR and Interreg Europe) were the focus of the meeting. The event started with a short presentation of the projects, followed by discussions on the existing challenges and the specific strengths in project development and implementation. The main objective of the meeting was to pass on the practical experiences of the project partners to the responsible Interreg authorities from Lower Saxony in order to improve the conditions and modalities of the Interreg program after 2020.
aconium presented the two ongoing projects CORA (COnnecting Remote Areas with digital infrastructure and services – Interreg NSR) and LowTEMP (Low Temperature District Heating for the Baltic Sea Region – Interreg BSR). During the meeting, CORA project coordinator Dr. Peyman Khodabakhsh (aconium) explained the importance of digital transformation for the rural areas of the North Sea region and highlighted the great potential of the CORA e-learning platform – one of the many project results. The platform could soon be used by all authorities in Lower Saxony.
In addition to CORA, several other Interreg projects with partners from Lower Saxony such as ZEROCO2, REBUS, GrowIn 4.0, HyTrEc 2, SmartUp accelerator, 2Impresz(European Institute for Innovation – EIfI) and TOP SOIL (Uelzen District Association of Water and Soil Associations) were presented.
All participants emphasized the importance of the Interreg programme for the integration of European regions and the value of transnational cooperation between several EU countries.
Image: CORA – Connecting Remote Areas with digital infrastructure and services
Image credit: aconium GmbH