SKYLA Partners attend "Europe, Let's Cooperate" in Antwerp
Between March 20-21, SYKLA partners attended the 10th ‘Europe, let's Cooperate’ 2024 Interregional Cooperation forum, in Antwerp. This event brings people from across the EU interested in interregional cooperation together. This year’s edition is particularly relevant as the Programme is welcoming seven new countries and it marks the launch of the third call for proposals. ASEV (Tuscany), the lead partner of SYKLA, was present in the Lead Partners’ seminar and EARLALL (Advisory Partner) were present over the two partners’ days.
The first day was focused on the celebration of cooperation, launching the third call for project proposals and welcoming new countries into the Interreg Europe programme. Slawomir Tokarski (European Commission), Manoëlle Wasseige (Belgian Presidency Of The Council Of The European Union) and Anne Wetzel (Director Of The European Department, Hauts-De-France Region) took stock of the achievements of Interreg Europe over the years. All of them agreed on the importance of the evolution of the programme, stressing cooperation and solidarity as key elements of territorial cooperation. After 20 years, the Interreg Europe Programme has managed to deliver results and improve policies in regions across Europe. In the new call, seven new countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Ukraine will be able to benefit from this opportunity.
The Interreg Europe Secretariat introduced two aspects of the programme: the building of projects and the policy learning platform. Thanks to the projects different territories can collectively address and improve common challenges through capacity-building activities, piloting actions and understanding how other regions are doing. They encourage the participants to involved and connect with new countries, so to enlarge the scope of their knowledge-sharing.
Inspiration for SKYLA’s policy development
On March 21, participants had the opportunity to learn about the Policy Learning Platform. The platform is a combination of best practices, peer-review processes and thematic experts that help to shape better policy solutions for regional challenges. Overall, the two days provided excellent insight into the opportunities of the programme and the possibilities of interregional collaboration to improve policy.