TRAM project has been present at the 5th interregional cooperation forum entitled 'Europe, let's cooperate!', taking place in Brussels on the 10th and 11th of April 2019.
The core idea behind the event has been to continue the exchange of ideas and views and to facilitate the networking between peers and partners from all over Europe.
In the opening plenary keynote speakers from National Contact Points, the European Commission, the Committee of Regions as well as the Interreg Europe Programme have discussed the importance of Interreg Europe for the Cohesion Policy, touching on topics like the importance of cooperation, its role in laying the foundations and paving the way for regions to realize their full potential as well as its long-term impact.
Pressing issues were also touched, like for example the future of territorial cooperation programmes in the next programming period, the difficult choices involved in continuing or abandoning programmes which have shown continuous results - due to budgetary constraints, but also to importance of motivating mainstream OPs to take up a more active role in promoting interregional cooperation and exchange of experience.
The first day continued with the presentation of several results from Interreg projects, so that participants could hear the stories behind statistics, meet the people behind the numbers and learn what interregional cooperation. The session has also been an excellent opportunity for the participants to learn about the Interreg Europe Policy Learning Platform.
The second part of the day has been dedicated to thematic sessions for each of the four Interreg Europe priorities, while in parallel participants could take part in networking sessions in the networking zone, discuss questions with the Interreg Europe staff and the Policy Learning Platform experts and also learn more about policy learning activities, peer reviews and policy matchmaking.
The second day will be dedicated strictly for Interreg Europe project partners, being organized in a workshop format, touching on practical issues like how to design successful action plans, how to better mobilize stakeholders, transfer good practices and experiences and most importantly, how to achieve results through implementing the action plans.
