The territorial cooperation’s actors from South-West Europe meets in Toulouse to talk about future  

• An exclusive opportunity to understand the negotiations of the future Cohesion Policy with key European cooperation’s actors.
• A unique occasion to discover 20 years of history of the Interreg Sudoe Programme through emblematic projects for the territorial development of South-West Europe.

Santander, 20/05/2019

Over the past twenty years, the Interreg Sudoe Programme, European Commission’s programme for territorial cooperation in South-West Europe, organises a seminar to explore the achievements of the programme with regard to European priorities such as a greener Europe, a digital Europe and the protection of our heritage. The event will take place in the Hotel de Region, in Toulouse (France), and will highlight how has Europe been built from the ground, motivating debates on the cooperation within the framework of the coming European Cohesion Policy currently under negotiations. Institutional, political and sectorial experts will debate with territorial actors on how to address current and new challenges such as climate change or health, paying specific attention to the way to conciliate territorial and political realities.

On next 19/06, the Hotel de Region in Toulouse (France) will host an event on the Interreg Sudoe Programme, the European Commission’s Programme on transnational cooperation in South-west Europe.  This seminar will count on the participation of the actors of the programme, representatives of the European territorial cooperation at different levels (European Commission, Committee of the Regions, Nationals Permanent Representations to the EU, etc.) and territorial actors in order to discuss the future of the European Cohesion Policy and therefore, of the Programme. In addition, the event will be complemented by debates between political/sectorial experts and representatives of emblematic projects that will address how to make policies and territorial particularities matching.

The event will conclude with a set of recommendations for the future programming period, based on the territorial challenges of the programme’s area. Thus, key topics will be discussed such as the ageing population and digitalization - through ICT4SILVER project on the development of silver economy’s SMEs; the protection of the environment - with SOIL_TAKE_CARE project on soils’ contamination and; the heritage’s preservation - with HERITAGE CARE project on the protection of heritage through digitalization.

“The Programme Sudoe has to continue in the future” stated Ramón Luis Valcárcel, Vice-President of the European Parliament (Committee of the Regions, 6/06/2018), highlighting the need of maintaining a programme that plays a key role regarding South-West Europe’s development. Thus, this event will be the opportunity to discover the achievements of the programme and reflect on its importance in the next Cohesion Policy.

Since 2000, the programme Interreg Sudoe has allocated more than € of the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER), co-funding more than 254 transnational projects in Spain, Portugal (mainland), France (South-West), United Kingdom (Gibraltar) and  the Principality of Andorra. These projects focus on different key topics such as innovation, climate change, industrial development, environment or energy transition. They have relied on the participation of more than 1700 public and private bodies, the involvement of more than 23000 SMEs,  creating more than 4000 jobs and 31 patents.