On September 17th the Plenary Session of the High-level Dissemination Event of Interreg Europe ENHANCE project was held in online format through Microsoft TEAMS.

The High-level Dissemination Event was convened by the Ministry of Territory and Sustainability of the Government of Catalonia leader of ENHANCE project, and jointly organized with all partners, the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Sustainable Development of the Regional Government of Andalusia, Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies-SSSA from Italy, Stockholm Environment Institute Tallinn Centre from Estonia, the Czech Environmental Information Agency and the Environment Agency of Austria.

The overall objective of Interreg Europe ENHANCE project (EMAS as a Nest to Help And Nurture the Circular Economy) is to improve the implementation of regional policy instruments oriented to increasing the efficiency in the use of resources by the exchange of experiences and practices on supporting EMAS (Eco-management and Audit scheme) registration.

ENHANCE project has identified regulatory relief and incentives that should help many organisations to implement EMAS strategically as a very competitive tool for the transition to a circular economy. ENHANCE project, is positioned therefore as a boost and an opportunity to encourage organizations, especially SMEs, to the transition towards a circular economy model.

The ENHANCE High-level Dissemination Event in its Plenary Session was intended to be of a strategic nature in order to give a vision of the projection that the actions developed by the project may have both at the level of administrations and organizations.

In this sense, the event has been an opportunity to have a projection of how EMAS is positioning in the framework of European policies in the field of the circular economy. To this end we have been able to count on the participation of Mr. Sadauskas, Director of Circular Economy & Green Growth from Directorate-General for Environment of the European Commission, who has given us a very clear vision of how the EU's Circular Economy Plan is linked to the Green Deal as a key element for its development. He has also expressed the potential value of EMAS as a very competent tool to facilitate organisations' transition from the current linear production model to a more resource-efficient circular model. Equally interesting has been the contribution of Ms Detry, EMAS policy officer of the European Commission, who has given us a presentation of EMAS in the European policy context. Ms. Detry has highlighted the motivation of the ENHANCE project to promote EMAS.

In the High-level Dissemination Event we also benefited from the valuable input of Mr Siweris, Programme Director of Interreg Europe, who has given us an insight into the current status and future prospects of the Interreg Europe Programme. In his presentation, some aspects of great interest of the ENHANCE project were pointed out, such as the contribution of the project to the Policy Learning Platform with some Good Practices identified and/or generated by the project and a brushstroke on the influence of some actions developed by the project on certain regional policies.

The High-level Dissemination Event was attended by all the partners who presented the results of the action plans that the project has generated, with the active involvement of their stakeholders, in each territory. The partners focused their presentations on those actions that have had or could have the greatest impact on regional policies and the added value that EMAS represents for the organisations.

During the event, has also been created a space for the discussion and interactions with attendees and through the chat of the session, has been exchanged some information on the subject and some interesting contributions have been made.

You can see the recording of the session through the following link:

https://youtu.be/7dYFd1SLHUY

The presentations of the HLDE 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,

www.interregeurope.eu/enhance/library/