How to change cooperation after 2027?

«Is living next to a border an opportunity or a disadvantage?», «What would be the cooperation project of your dreams?» These are some of the questions that citizens and organisations involved in cooperation across EU’s external borders will be invited to answer in the coming months. In preparing for the post-2027 Interreg programmes, the European Commission has launched a twofold consultation process, to gather suggestions as to what shape Interreg should take in the next programming cycle.

Interreg is an integral part of Cohesion policy and at the same time presents strong specificities, such as the cross-border external dimension and the cooperation with non-Member States, Interreg NEXT.  The European Commission deems essential that the whole community takes part in a debate that will impact its own future, and has therefore launched a wide consultation process, targeting on one side the Interreg programmes themselves, and on the other the people living in the border regions, the local communities, the beneficiaries, the citizens, who know best what their needs are.  They will be consulted in a variety of forms, to find out what are the major obstacles for cooperation, on what topics cooperation is more needed, or what novelty they would like to see in the future.

TESIM will support the consultation of citizens and stakeholders organised by the ENI CBC and Interreg NEXT programmes, which will mostly take the form of online surveys, events, and online forums. TESIM will also facilitate exchanges among programmes, and it will gather the views of the national authorities in Partner Countries, with a specific focus on the new candidate countries Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. It will support a reflection as well on the future of cooperation in the former programmes with Russia and Belarus.

In the autumn and until spring 2025, several harvesting events will feed-back on the consultations results and will open new perspectives for cooperation. This will include an annual conference for the ENI CBC and Interreg NEXT community, expected in September.