The European Week of Regions and Cities (EUWRC) is a joint endeavour of the European Committee of the Region and the EU Commission’s Directorate General for Regional Policy. It welcomes 6.000 participants each year, organising and participating to over 100 workshops on a variety of topics, all relevant to regional development.
It is an opportunity to showcase projects and results, as we did together with other fellow Interreg Programmes at the #MadeWithInterreg stand and at the Climate Talk, where Christopher presented the work of APP4SEA in the context of climate change.
This was also the time for the Interreg Project Slam competition, where APP4SEA was one of the finalists. The Interreg Project Slam is a competition about presenting Interreg projects results in an entertaining and engaging way. APP4SEA made an amazing performance, but unfortunately did not make it on the podium. The winners of the Interreg Project Slam this year were the kids of the 2IMPREZS project, from the North Sea Region Programme, showing energy saving practices at school.
Learning about the future of Interreg was one of the main goals of the JS staff for attending the EUWRC. As the regulatory process is underway, much is still to be agreed. What clearly emerged is that we can expect further simplification of the rules and procedures. A technical presentation from the Commission can be viewed here.
The NPA attend several workshops which help improving the programme's daily work as well as preparation for the future. We participated to a session about cooperation on external borders, one on global megatrends and how to include their impacts into territorial planning and we also discussed with fellow Interreg programmes what is the role of cooperation in a changing Europe. We believe this will help us become better at what we are doing.
In 2020 Interreg will celebrate its 30th anniversary, thus we hope it will be one of the themes of the EUWRC 2020. The event will probably take place from 12th to 15th October in Brussels, so save the date!