Objectives

This meeting organised by Interact intends to take stock of programme activities that were undertaken under the thematic objective 11 “enhancing institutional capacity of public authorities and stakeholders and efficient public administration” in Interreg and other cooperation activities, such as Macro-regional strategies. The meeting aims at establishing an exchange of experience across cooperation programmes (and others) and their management authorities with regard to the topic mentioned above and thereby lead to a discourse on how cooperation programmes can contribute to capacity development. It also intends to develop the thematic knowledge of participants via the exchange with academia, policy makers, and mainstream policies. In the course of the network’s development, the thematic objective will be broken down into sub-topics in order to enable in-depth discussion.

Outline

The Interact Programme has established capitalisation networks dealing with some of the thematic objectives 5 (climate change), 7 (transport), 8-9-10 (inclusive growth), and 11 institutional capacity (TO11). Interreg programmes are a major contribution to the institutional development both in quantitative terms and qualitative terms. They invest into projects that support capacity building. Moreover, cooperation activities and initiatives also support the sustained exchange of experience across borders and thereby the institutional development in a multi-level governance framework. In this respect, it should also be borne in mind that institutional development is a cross-cutting theme and at the same time, institutional capacity can be seen as a pre-condition for project and programme implementation in Regional Policy.

 

The Interact Capitalisation Plan proposes the following activities for the capitalisation networks:

• Analysing past and current Interreg results in order to gain insight and improve project practices.
• Contributing to the shaping of future action and strategies at project, programme and at policy levels.
• Promoting the re-use and/or transfer of this knowledge and these results, in order to support performance and delivery, future policies and programmes’ developments.
• Making programmes’ and projects’ achievements more visible, through a broader view (not only limited to priorities).
• Provide feedback to EU policy makers on how EU support makes a difference in the field and to identify ways to target such support in a better way

 

Day one

Monday, 19 March 2018

12.00-13.00

Registration and Welcome Lunch

13.30-14.15

Welcome and tour de table

14.15-14.30

Introduction and objectives of the meeting

Jörg Mirtl, Interact Programme

14.30-15.30

Group work: Project presentations & discussion (Interreg)

15.30-16.00

Coffee break

16.00-16.20

Presentation of the b-solutions project

Max Maurenbrecher, European Association for Border Regions

16.20-16.40

Activities of Urbact in the fields of capacity building and capitalisation

Clémentine Gravier, Urbact Programme

16.40-17.00

Cross-border multi-level governance – point of view of the Mission Operationelle Transfrontalière (MOT)

Alexandra Lafont, MOT

17.00-17.30

Introduction to the macro-regional perspective

Claudia Singer, EU Strategy for the Danube Region

Staša Mesec, EU Strategy for the Adriatic and Ionian Region (tbc)

 

Day two

Tuesday, 20 March 2018

09.00-09.30

Presentations and Discussion of the Observatory for Public Sector Innovation (OPSI)

Kevin Richman, OECD

9.30-10.00

Capacity Building across borders - presentation of the ESF PAG platform and options for more transnational cooperation

Vladimir Kvaca, AEIDL

10.00-10.40

Communication aspects of Interreg projects related to TO11

Ulf Wikström, Interact Programme

10.40-11.00

Coffee break

11.00-12.00

Discussion of next steps and operational issues

12.00-12.30

Conclusion of the meeting

12.30

Goodbye lunch