Under the slogan ‘Bringing territoriality into Interreg’ Interact works together with the Interreg community and national, regional and local territorial actors on strengthening the territorial dimension of Interreg cooperation (programmes and projects). The work started back in 2020 with events on the notion of territoriality and functional areas and focused in 2021 on the linkages and interaction between Interreg and the Territorial Agenda 2030. It is now high time to move from awareness raising and the conceptual discussion to the day-to-day implementation level.

With the event organised by Interact within the framework of the French Presidency of the Council of the European Union, we want to present a couple of examples of European cross-border functional areas and to highlight practical approaches to their governance. Functional areas which are practising territoriality in their everyday activities and hence are home turfs and best practice cases for territoriality. Hereby, we want to show the added value of strengthening the territorial dimension in Interreg, in cooperation across borders.