The regional policy of the European Union (EU), also referred as Cohesion Policy, is a policy with the stated aim of improving the economic well-being of regions in the European Union and also to avoid regional disparities. More than one third of the EU's budget is devoted to this policy, which aims to remove economic, social and territorial disparities across the EU, restructure declining industrial areas and diversify rural areas which have declining agriculture. In doing so, EU regional policy is geared towards making regions more competitive, fostering economic growth and creating new jobs. The policy also has a role to play in wider challenges for the future, including climate change, energy supply and globalisation.
The European Structural and Investment Funds are financial tools governed by a common rulebook, set up to implement the regional policy of the European Union, as well as the structural policy pillars of the Common Agricultural Policy and the Common Fisheries Policy. They aim to reduce regional disparities in income, wealth and opportunities. Europe's poorer regions receive most of the support, but all European regions are eligible for funding under the policy's various funds and programmes. The current Regional Policy framework is set for a period of seven years, from 2021 to 2027.
The European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) is one of the European Structural and Investment Funds allocated by the European Union. Its purpose is to transfer money from richer regions, and invest it in the infrastructure and services of underdeveloped regions. This will allow those regions to start attracting private sector investments, and create jobs on their own.
The European Social Fund Plus (ESF+) is one of the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIFs), which are dedicated to improving social cohesion and economic well-being across the regions of the Union. The funds are redistributive financial instruments that support cohesion within Europe by concentrating spending on the less-developed regions.
Interreg is a series of programmes to stimulate cooperation between regions in and out of the European Union (EU), funded by the European Regional Development Fund. The first Interreg started in 1989. Interreg IV covered the period 2007–2013. Interreg V (2014–2020) covers all 27 EU member states, the EFTA countries, six accession countries and 18 neighbouring countries. It has a budget of EUR 10.1 billion, which represents 2.8% of the total of the European Cohesion Policy budget. Since the non EU countries don't pay EU membership fee, they contribute directly to Interreg, not through ERDF.
The European Route of Industrial Heritage (ERIH) is a tourist route of the most important industrial heritage sites in Europe. This is a tourism industry information initiative to present a network of industrial heritage sites across Europe. The aim of the project is to create interest for the common European heritage of the Industrialisation and its legacy. ERIH also wants to promote regions, towns and sites showing the industrial history and market them as visitor attractions in the leisure and tourism industry.
The Baltic Sea Region Programme 2007–2013 is a support programme part-financed by the European Union and Norway. It is one of the mainstream Structural Funds programmes under the European Community’s territorial co-operation objective. The Programme will support transnational projects working together for balanced and sustainable development of the European territory.
The European Observation Network for Territorial Development and Cohesion, ESPON for short, is a European funded programme under the objective of "European Territorial Cooperation" of the Cohesion Policy of the European Union. It is co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund - Interreg.
EUREGIO is a cross-border region between the Netherlands and Germany and the first Euroregion. It was founded in 1958 as a German Eingetragener Verein, and has been converted in 2016 into a Public Body based on the 1991 Anholt treaty. Participating communities are in Niedersachsen and Nordrhein-Westfalen (Münsterland) in Germany and parts of the Dutch provinces Gelderland, Overijssel and Drenthe. Participating cities in the region are Münster, Osnabrück, Gronau, Enschede, and Hengelo. The headquarters of the Euregio is located in the city of Gronau, at the Dutch border.
Transnational governance, within a European Union framework, is both a subset of governance in general and an application of it to situations outside its usual limits of corporate or governmental hierarchies, whether regional or national. When such disparate hierarchies within the EU find common goals, typically within a conterminous geographic area, they seek to achieve them by integrating their various policies and activities. The goals of transnational governance, especially for areas previously divided by the Iron Curtain or pre-EU barriers to free trade and movement of peoples, is to foster economic and social development.
POWER cluster is a project that aims to establish a business cluster for offshore wind power in the North Sea Region. It is part-funded by the North Sea Region Programme which is part of the transnational branch (IVB) of Interreg, one of the regional policy instruments of the European Union under the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). It is the successor of the POWER project funded under Interreg IIIB.
The Grande Région (French) or Großregion (German) programme lies within the Interreg IV A programme of the European Union's European Regional Development Fund. It facilitates cooperation between project partners from the different parts of the Greater Region of SaarLorLux: Luxembourg, the Belgian provinces of Luxembourg and Liège, the French Lorraine region as well as the Saarland and large parts of Rhineland-Palatinate. The programme covers the period 2007-2013. Projects approved within the programme receive financial aid of up to 50% of their budget.
The INTERREG IV France-Wallonie-Vlaanderen Programme 2007–2013, which is co-financed by the European Union, aims at intensifying the cooperation in a cross-border area of 62,000 km2 with around 10.5 million inhabitants: the provinces Hainaut, Namur, Luxembourg, Western Flanders and Eastern Flanders in Belgium and the departments Nord-Pas-de-Calais, Aisne and Ardennes in France.
Cross-border cooperation is the collaboration between adjacent areas across borders. In the European Union this is one of the forms of territorial cooperation. The European model is very diverse with cooperation between border regions or municipalities, or through specific cooperation structures. These structures are usually composed by public authorities from different countries organized in working communities, euroregions or EGTCs.
The Greece–Bulgaria Territorial Co-operation Programme is a European cooperation Programme according to the European Cohesion Policy 2007–2013.
The Institute for Small and Medium Industry of the Generalitat Valenciana (IMPIVA) is a public body of the Generalitat Valenciana established by the law of the Generalitat Valenciana 2 / 84 and attached to the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Commerce.
AT Brand is a European project co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), Interreg Atlantic Area IVB supporting transnational co-operation projects in Atlantic regions. From 1 January 2014 through September 2015 the project focused on innovation and management in integrated city branding.
Since its accession in the European Union in 2007, Bulgaria has been part of the EU's Cohesion Policy. This program introduces financial instruments, also known as the European Structural and Investment Funds, which aim to reduce the gap between different regions of the EU and improve their economic wellbeing.
Iron-Age-Danube was a project that ran from 2017–2019 that worked on communicating archaeological research to the general public. It was a part of the Interreg Danube Transnational Programme of the European Union.
