The study ‘Macro-regional strategies and their links with cohesion policy’, contracted by the Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy and conducted by a consortium led by the consultancy COWI, has been published recently. The study includes the main report and strategy-specific analytical reports. It provides a very comprehensive analysis of the four existing EU macro-regional strategies (for the Baltic, the Danube, the Adriatic and Ionian, and the Alpine regions) and describes the main features of each macro-region. It assesses the extent to which the strategies contribute to coordination and synergies between European Structural and Investment Funds and other EU policies and programmes. The study also takes stock of the strategies' main achievements, identifies the barriers to overcome and the drivers to use in order to make them more efficient. Finally, the study looks at the potential of the macro-regional approach to contribute to the future cohesion policy. The study is available here.