This week in #EUSAIR
The beginning of October was a very productive week for the EU Strategy for the Adriatic-Ionian Region (EUSAIR). Our representatives succesfully promoted the EUSAIR Strategy at numerous events around Europe. Check a short wrap-up below.
-on 8 October, the EUSAIR representatives from Greece participated as speakers at the European Week of Regions and Cities in Brussels - the biggest event on EU regional and urban policy and EU cohesion policy organized annually. At the session, organized by the ESPON programme they discussed the development of a »macro-regional monitoring tool« for monitoring key development trends, implementation of policies & actions and measurement of progress in achieving policy objectives of the four EU macro-regional strategies, namely the the Baltic Strategy (EUSBSR), the Danube Strategy (EUSDR), the Alpine Strategy (EUSALP) and the Adriatic-Ionian Strategy (EUSAIR) in the post-2020 period.
The Greek representatives shared their valuable knowledge and experience, as they are in charge for developing a »Monitoring and evaluation framework for the EUSAIR Strategy«. You can find more information about the session here: https://www.espon.eu/ewrc2019-macroregions
-on 9 October, Slovenian members of the EUSAIR Strategy and managing authorities for ESIF Funds (European structural and investment funds) discussed possibilities to include macro-regional priorities in the mainstream programmes the next multiannual financial framework 2021-2027.
This was already the 4th Financial dialogue, gathering Slovenian institutions involved in the management of the European Structural and Investment Funds and key representatives of macro-regional strategies in Slovenia. Through the workshop participants found common points that should be further built upon in order to establish a mutually beneficial relationship in post 2020 period.
The 4th Financial dialogue involved the highest number of line ministries since 2017 and participants agreed there is a need for continuation of regular meetings.
-on 10 October, the EUSAIR Facility Point Lead partner and Facility Point Plus project attended the INTERACT event in Brussels.
Participants discussed the common capacity building needs and related support and services that can be provided by Interact to all four macro-regional strategies.
The discussion circulated around the following domains: communication, capitalisation and alignment of funding (known as embedding) and with a special attention to the following questions:
"What is the essence of macro-regional strategies and how can we make a sense of macro-regions for the external audience?"
"What type of common messages can we develop for all four macro-regional strategies?"
"How can we better explain and describe roles and responsibilites of key implementers dealing with macro-regions?«
"Would a common branding help in explaining the added value of macro-regions?"
"How to align macro-regional strategies with other funding sources, especially the ESIF mainstream programmes and ETC programmes?"
As strategic communication was one of the key topics on the day, communication managers from all four macro-regional strategies attended the event. All participants agreed that the the domains should be further elaborated and possibilities for common conducting common activities and support should be further explored.
-on 10 October, the EUSAIR representatives from Italy and Serbia in charge for Transport issues attended the 47th European Transport Conference (ETC) in Dublin.
The European Transport Conference is the leading European organisation for transport professionals and academics, addressing issues of global interest, such as sustainable urban development, wider economic impacts of investments in infrastructure and others.
The EUSAIR representatives chaired and were key speakers of the session titled "Connecting South-East Europe: vision and challenges of the European Strategy for the Adriatic-Ionian Region", in which they provide the audience with an insight on macro-regional cooperation in the sector of transport, which in practice means proposing new ways to policy making and decission-making processes featuring multi-level governance including stakeholders involvement at different levels.
The EUSAIR Facility Point project partner from Italy, attended the conference with an exhibition stand to promote the EUSAIR Stakeholder Platform as a tool for sharing and fostering the transport-related debates among the relevant organisations.
This year, the conference programme covered supranational cross-cutting issues dealing with Innovation, Digitisation and Decarbonisation of Transport, which was probably the reason for a high number of attendees, as the conference was attended by 600 researchers and scholars coming from almost 20 countries of Europe and from around the world.
