In the framework of the INTERREG EUROPE 5th Call, additional activities for ENHANCE Project were approved on the last month of August 2021, to further help us to deal with the COVID crisis.
These additional activities offer the possibility for the ENHANCE project:
• To further exchange experiences on the way the crisis impacts on EMAS supporting, to face and recover from the COVID crisis; and
• To further improve the addressed Regional Policy Instruments to better face and recover from this unprecedented situation.
The Circular Economy has become one of EU's priorities to face and recover from the COVID crisis and EMAS has been recognised as driver of Circular Economy model. Through the Policy Instruments addressed, the aim is to promote EMAS as model for environmental governance, sustainable development and green economy. To achieve all Policy Instruments improvements it’s necessary to jointly agree management of EMAS governance model itself among all stakeholders to incorporate changes derived from crisis.
These additional activities will be organized based upon an integrated and interregional approach from 1 September 2021 to 31 August 2022 with the aim at:
• Understanding how the Policy Instruments addressed has been affected by COVID and how participating regions have reacted to face and recover from this crisis; and
• Sharing, exchanging experiences and understanding how they can be adopted from a region to another, but also discuss about how they have influenced on Regional Policies to make them more resilient.
During the coming year, four of the ENHANCE partners, the Ministry of Climate Action, Food and Rural Agenda of the Government of Catalonia, leader of ENHANCE project, Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies from Italy, Stockholm Environment Institute Tallinn Centre from Estonia and Environment Agency of Austria, will analyse and update its own state of play analysis and identify new and relevant experiences on EMAS to face and recover from crisis. Based on the previous identification of experiences, thematic workshops will be organised in order to increase the knowledge, spread the impact of capacity building and increase the resilience of Policy Instruments and Authorities.
The stakeholders (companies, verifiers, competent authorities and policy officer of Policy Instruments) will have again a crucial role by sharing experiences, voicing opinions about approaches from their sectors to intensify the exchange experiences and participating in the workshops to ensure a successful transfer experiences and to increase knowledge and chance of achieving Policy Instruments changes.
