On the 26th of June ISE Mission project took part in the Med Lab Annual meeting dedicated to the future of Cohesion Policy, in a session dedicated to coordination and synergies at different levels in the Mediterranean region. The aim was to present an important initiative that will soon be implemented.
Med Lab is a platform, supported by INTERACT, which aims to share and transfer Mediterranean-based knowledge and to improve synergies and complementarities between Interreg programmes and other EU funds active in the area in order to increase their impact in the region.This network is aimed at the European Commission, Interreg programmes active in the Mediterranean, Monitoring Committee members, representatives of geographical strategies such as EUSAIR, West Med and UfM, and other relevant stakeholders from the Interreg world. More information can be found here.
Innovative Sustainable Economy Mission participated in the Med Lab Annual meeting in a panel dedicated to the role of partnership in increasing synergies. In this context, Mr. Alessandro Daraio, Project Coordinator of Dialogue4Innovation on behalf of the Emilia-Romagna Region, presented MedCopNet, a study funded by ESPON as a Targeted Analysis. The study will play a crucial role at both project and mission level, covering the entire Mediterranean functional area and going beyond the Programme scope to promote bottom-up synergies with initiatives from other programmes, as proposed by the Interreg Euro-MED 2021-2027 Results Amplification Strategy (RAS).
The proposal has been submitted by a large number of actors from the Euro-MED world and beyond, which gives it great added value. In particular, the consortium is composed of Emilia-Romagna Region – Interreg IPA ADRION Managing Authority, the Interreg Euro-MED Managing Authority, the Interreg NEXT MED Managing Authority, the Ministry of Regional Development and EU Funds of the Republic of Croatia, CRPM-IMC, the Government of Catalonia, Nice Côte d’Azur Metropolis, UNEP/MAP, Crete Region. In addition, other relevant actors will be involved in the implementation of the analysis, including UfM, Regional Cooperation Council, PRIMA Program, INTERACT and WestMED Initiative.
MedCopNet will consist of a mapping of the most active actors and networks cooperating in the Mediterranean in thematic areas related to the scope of the Innovative Sustainable Economy Mission, which will be specifically defined. The analysis will lead to the creation of an user-friendly interactive platform, mixing open data from the past and current programming period related to the Interreg programmes operating in the area and other programmes with available open data (e.g. Horizon, Erasmus+, etc.). In perspective, this exercise will help to explore and evaluate the combined impact of the Interreg Programmes in the Mediterranean territories and will be a tool to promote bottom-up cooperation and action-oriented governance mechanisms, facilitating stakeholders’ access to granular knowledge and thus filling an existing knowledge gap. The platform will include a visualisation of the interactive networks, territorial distribution and thematic and data extraction.
In addition to properly addressing the existing knowledge gap, the cooperation between the different Euro-Mediterranean actors within MedCopNet will be an opportunity for the governance project to show 360° its support for better coordination in this area. The terms of reference for the analysis will be drawn up in the coming weeks, and its implementation will start at the end of the summer.
