The story of cooperation within the Investment for growth and jobs (IGJ) goal originated during the Open Days back in 2010. The spirit that drove participants ’ motivation was to attempt to join as many European stakeholders as possible and to clarify the methodology and activities that could be implemented through cooperation under mainstream programmes.

Over the last two programming periods, the same questions, doubts, and wonderings kept being raised, together with the eagerness to explore and know more, especially concerning how to apply cooperation element in the mainstream programmes as a tool to strengthen and exploit new ways of working together. These questions are especially important in the context of the new funding period – 2020-2027, where cooperation has been set as a horizontal principle.

The proposed draft regulatory framework for the financial period 2021-2027 encourages cooperation, alignment and better synergies between different EU funding sources to assure the efficient contribution to five EU policy objectives: smarter, greener, more connected more social Europe and Europe closer to citizens. The aim is to ensure that actions and investments which have a higher EU added value when implemented jointly should be promoted.

Objectives

This online session aims to highlight and promote the use of cooperation possibilities as understood by Art 17.3 of the future Common Provisions Regulation. The session will facilitate exchange of experience among managing authorities having focus on the programming period and lessons learnt (what worked, what was still a struggle and where is room for improvements). The session will also discuss implementation practices and how to use the orientation provided by territorial frameworks, such as macro-regional strategies.

To prepare for the meeting please see the presentations from the event S3 Partnerships and Cooperation under IGJ goal held on 25.11.2020.
The video presentation presents the knowledge gathered so far as well as explains the cooperation possibilities and scales enabled by the draft regulation for the period 2020-2027.
Please consider these materials as the introduction to the session.
For inspiration, please also see the recent publication: Guidelines on Cooperation Under IJG goal 2020+ published by Interact in December 2020.