Brussels, 17/10/2001 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday, the European Commission approved an aid programme in favour of the Baltic Sea region for the period 2000-2006. The programme, which comes under the Community initiative Interreg III, provides financial aid of EUR 97 million to promote transnational cooperation between Denmark, north east Germany, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia and Belarus. European funding will attract a further EUR 85 million in investment from the public sector and EUR 4 million from the private sector, according to Commission estimates. In addition, EUR 32 million will come from other sources (mainly from the PHARE programme) and from Norwegian national contributions, creating total resources of EUR 218 million. Commissioner for regional policy Michel Barnier expressed the hope that the programme would "make a substantial contribution to the further development of transnational cooperation in the Baltic Sea Region". "This is the first transnational programme to be approved under Interreg III, a fact due to the excellent cooperation that the partner countries have developed over recent years. The programme which involves 11 countries is a demonstration of the potential of the Interreg programme and its ability to foster economic, social and spatial cohesion on a transnational scale", he commented.
Priorities of the programme are: - Spatial development: promotion of spatial development concepts, tourism development and the development of coastal zones (EU contribution: EUR 29 million); - sustainable development: strategic networking of major urban centres, on urban-rural partnerships, on strategies and solutions on Pan-Baltic intermodal transport, the development of green networks and the management of water resources (EU contribution: EUR 48.7 million); - transnational institution building: spatial development activities across borders must rely on local and regional networks (EU contribution: EUR 13.9 million).
The programme aims to involve regional and local administrations as much as possible (2/3 of the project must be achieved in partnership with these authorities), and also to promote multinational cooperation in the various actions (2/3 of projects should have more than two countries participating), and to intensify participation from candidate and partner countries.