EMBEDDING MACRO-REGIONAL STRATEGIES IN EU FUNDING
The alignment of funds is one of the core issues within macro-regional strategies, meaning better coordination of policies and funding in order to fulfil the targets of the strategies more effectively.
Thus, the partner countries and regions are encouraged to integrate macro-regional strategies in their Partnership Agreements as well as in their Operational Programmes of the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF).
The Interact programme recently published the study “Embedding macro-regional strategies” that analysed the cooperation and coordination methods and tools applied by EU funding programmes of the 2014-2020 period that aim to embed the EU Strategy for the Danube Region and the EU Strategy for the Adriatic Ionian Region.
The study shows that funding programmes systematically embed the EUSDR and EUSAIR along three main dimensions:
- Actions to ensure compliance with the provisions of macro-regional strategies in the relevant EU regulations for the funding period 2014-2020;
- Actions that apply “synergy-enabling rules” to the current EU regulation and associated non-regulatory approaches and tools that support the implementation of macro-regional strategy;
- Actions in the field of coordination, cooperation and information exchange to ensure a more coherent implementation of a macro-regional strategy.
Despite some positive results regarding the embedding of macro-regional strategies, the analysis reveals a number of persisting weaknesses that hamper a more systematic embedding of the EUSDR and EUSAIR.
The findings of the analysis provide a useful starting point for the discussion on good practices and needs for improvement regarding the embedding of macro-regional strategies in the next funding period.
The study is available in our Documents section (Studies & Reports).
