António Cunha, President of the Managing Authority, highlighted yesterday in the Interreg Atlantic Area Annual Event that “we have been one of the most effective cohesion policy programmes in terms of transnational cooperation”, referring to the 99% execution rate on the previous European cycle and thanking all partners for the contributions and their role as facilitators.
“If there are any doubts about the main ambassadors of cohesion policy programmes, this high implementation rate reaffirms that they are the direct beneficiaries”, remarked, addressing the Atlantic stakeholders in the audience of the co-opening session Interreg Annual Event and Atlantic Stakeholders Platform Conference.
The event brought together public and private institutions from the four Member States involved in partnerships reflected in the priorities supported by Interreg Atlantic Area in the framework 2021-2027. It was an opportunity to discuss the future of European cooperation in the post-27. Partners suggested enabling beneficiaries to dedicate a percentage of their budget to citizen initiatives, leveraging existing events to promote Interreg projects and their outcomes, as well as benefiting from more flexible strategies for example considering not synchronizing stages between partners.
The Annual Event also allowed to share a testimony from the final evaluation of the Programme in the cycle 2014-2020 and the support to more than 1.100 partners and associated partners across the Atlantic regions. More than 200 concrete and tangible results contributed towards a positive change and more than 500 outputs have been materialised with 185 million Euros of total investment (140 million Euros from the European Regional Development Fund).