Mission
INTERREG IVB North West Europe (NWE) Programme is a financial instrument of the European Union’s Cohesion Policy
Over the next seven years, the programme will invest €355 million from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) into the economic, environmental, social and territorial future of North West Europe (NWE). The fund will be used to co-finance projects that maximize the diversity of NWE’s territorial assets by tackling common challenges through transnational cooperation. To this end, the Programme seeks organisations that are resolute in their ambition to contribute to a cohesive and sustainable territorial development of North West Europe. |
Transnational Cooperation
Transnational cooperation is the core of the INTERREG IVB Programme. It allows countries to work together on mutually beneficial projects to tackle issues that go beyond national borders. It produces transferable working models, and speeds up the process of innovation through the sharing of knowledge and development costs. The collective benefits of such collaboration are invaluable; participating organisations acquire new skills, initiate effective working methods and increase their connections to European network.
Transnational Challenges
A transnational challenge, by definition, can only be tackled effectively at local, regional or national level through co-operation. That is to say, the scale and consequences of any given social, economic or environmental challenge should determine the scale of the intervention. North West Europe suffers from common environmental, social and economic pressures that are neither confined by national governments nor by administrative boundaries. The NWE Programme helps project promoters to transform such transnational challenges into opportunities for change.
The results of previous projects are examples of this ambition: some prevented river flooding by widening the riverbed; other projects used wetlands to create resources for adapted agriculture and forestry; several others tackled social issues by redeveloping urban brownfields to foster opportunities for small-scale economic development. To succeed, these challenges often necessitate multilateral intervention. With an aim to facilitate such intervention, the European Union funds projects in the field of
territorial development through the INTERREG IVB NWE Programme.
In addition to the financial support provided by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the benefits of participating in an NWE project include:
- Benefits to the NWE Zone
- Investment decisions based on sound European territorial development analysis
- Maximization of territorial assets which facilitates economic development
- Benefits to your project
- Reduction of development costs and efficient use of time
- Maximum use of available expertise through the transfer of good practice
- Development of a model which is transferable across different countries
- A European dimension attracts media attention
- Benefits to your organisation
- Capacity building, both for the organisation and for the personnel
- Access to European networks and markets
- Awareness of policy developments across Europe
- A European profile, particularly beneficial for attracting talented professionals
