Third call comes with a thematic focus

Interreg CENTRAL EUROPE will offer around 60 million EUR ERDF for new transnational cooperation ideas as of 21 September 2017. The programme seeks project ideas that help to improve capacities for urban and regional development in four priority areas: innovation and knowledge development, CO2 reduction, natural and cultural resources, and transport.

Following the first two calls in 2015 and 2016, 85 currently funded projects are already addressing a wide range of shared challenges across central Europe. Based on an analysis of topics covered by the running projects, the programme monitoring committee decided in their meeting in Vienna on 21 and 22 June to better target the third call for proposals in some areas. As a consequence, there will be five fully open specific objectives and four targeted specific objectives, encouraging transnational project ideas to improve. One specific objective (SO 2.3 – Improving capacities for mobility planning in functional urban areas to lower CO2 emissions) will remain closed, thus no projects proposals will be selected for funding in the third call, because topics are already sufficiently covered by running projects.

The five fully open specific objectives are the following:

• SO 2.2 – Low-carbon energy planning strategies and policies supporting climate change mitigation
• SO 3.1 – Capacities for the protection and sustainable use of natural heritage and resources
• SO 3.3 – Environmental management of functional urban areas
• SO 4.1 – Planning and coordination of regional passenger transport systems for better connections to existing networks
• SO 4.2 – Coordination among freight transport stakeholders for multimodal environmentally-friendly solutions

The four targeted specific objectives are the following:

• SO 1.1 – Sustainable linkages among actors of the innovation systems – proposals shall exclusively target: bottom-up implementation of smart specialisation strategies; triple and quadruple helix approaches which strengthen the participation of public and civil society; innovative practices such as co-creation approaches and actions that bring innovation closer to the market
• SO 1.2 – Skills and entrepreneurial competences for advancing economic & social innovation – proposals shall exclusively target: social innovation and the integration of disadvantaged groups and regions through strengthening support infrastructures, services and schemes; development of entrepreneurial competences to strengthen social innovation
• SO 2.1 – Energy efficiency and renewable energy usage in public infrastructures – proposals shall exclusively target: energy efficiency of public infrastructure other than public buildings and streetlights (e.g. transport, water, waste or ICT infrastructure) including their financing aspects and integration of renewable energy sources
• SO 3.2 – Capacities for the sustainable use of cultural heritage and resources – proposals shall exclusively target: Cultural and creative industries (CCI) such as CCI entrepreneurship, CCI policies, cross-sectoral cooperation and linkages of CCI to other sectors and innovative technologies

The third call will be launched at the programme conference in Berlin and stay open until 25 January 2018. More detailed information about all funding priorities and specific objectives is available in the Interreg CENTRAL EUROPE Cooperation Programme – Version 2.0.