In the framework of the additional activities of ENHANCE project, the project partners and their main stakeholders, has held on-line on March 29th through Microsoft Teams, an Interregional Meeting .
The Interregional meeting was convened by the Ministry of Climate Action, Food and Rural Agenda of the Government of Catalonia leader of ENHANCE project, and jointly organized with all partners, Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies-SSSA from Italy, Stockholm Environment Institute Tallinn Centre from Estonia and the Environment Agency of Austria.
The main objective of this Interregional Meeting has been to lay the groundwork for the exchange experiences on EMAS to face and recover from the COVID crisis.
The main actors involved in EMAS implementation (EMAS Competent Bodies, EMAS Verifiers and EMAS-registered organizations) have been represented.
On the one hand, project partners have shared the main results obtained from the surveys and interviews carried out to know how EMAS has been affected by COVID crisis.
In this sense, the meeting was an opportunity to present, from different experiences, how the EMAS system has responded to the situation created by the pandemic and also how some organisations have managed the crisis and detected opportunities for improvement.
To this end we have been able to count on the participation of Ms. Detry, EMAS policy officer of the European Commission, who outlined the European Commission's response to the EMAS scheme and the EMAS evaluation process during the crisis and the current position on this issue.
And, on the other hand, representatives from National Accreditation Entities, EMAS Competent Bodies, EMAS Verifiers and EMAS-registered organisations (from public and private sectors) have shared and exchanged their experiences and practices carried out to face and recover from the COVID crisis.
This Interregional Meeting has open debate and discussion about the key issues to be addressed during the next Thematic Workshops, which will be held in April and June to in-depth analyse those experiences and practices more susceptible to be exchanged and transferred to the participating regions to face and recover from this unprecedented situation, as the COVID pandemic.
Once again it has been highlighted that EMAS has been selected by all participating regions and countries as one of the most effective tools to improve efficiency resources, providing more resilience, more capacity to response emergency situations and more prepared to advance towards to Circular Economy model.
You can see the recording of the session through the following link,
The presentations of the Interregional Meeting are available in the Library of the ENHANCE project's website, in which we can also find all the information on the project and the documentation it has generated,
projects2014-2020.interregeurope.eu/enhance/library/
