Cohesion Policy and INTERREG programmes

News
Events
Maps
MOT Publications

Policy and tools

Consultation workshops to prepare the next Interreg France-Switzerland programme

June 2026

Policy and tools

The European Cross-Border Platform (ECBP) met in Brussels

June 2026

See all news

Oct 26

EURegionsWeek 2026 “Strong regions, strong Europe”

Brussels

Apr 26

Troisième réunion du groupe de travail Post-27 [FR]

En ligne. Réservé aux membres

See all events

Policy and tools

Programmes opérationnels INTERREG 2021-2027 aux frontières françaises [FR]

Update: 2024

Policy and tools

Cross-border programmes of the European Neighbourhood Instrument

Update: 2022

See all maps

Société civile et citoyenneté transfrontalière [FR]

January 2026

“Territorial Cohesion and Cross-border Regions, out of Territorialism?”

January 2026

Including an article by Jean Peyrony, published in A Future for the European Patchwork: Cohesion through Spatial Planning since 1990 (ARL, Campus Publishers).

See all publications

Summary

Introduction

The European Union’s cohesion policy aims to ‘reduce economic, social and territorial disparities between regions’. It is based on three main funds: the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the European Social Fund Plus (ESF+) and the Cohesion Fund. Among its priorities is ‘European territorial cooperation’, the main instrument for which is the Interreg programme.

Launched in 1990, Interreg supports cooperation between border regions to promote harmonious and sustainable development. It comprises several strands: cross-border cooperation (Interreg A), transnational cooperation (Interreg B) and interregional cooperation (Interreg C). For the period 2021–2027, Interreg has a budget of around €8 billion, which will strengthen the resilience of regions in the face of climate and digital challenges.

Cross-border cooperation concerns NUTS 3 regions situated along internal land borders. European Union regions situated along maritime borders must be separated by a maximum distance of 150 km to be eligible.

Programmes

In Europe, 64 cross-border programmes are currently active along the European Union’s internal borders, with funding totalling 6.6 billion euros. Four of these programmes are interregional (Interreg ESPON, Interact, Interreg Europe and URBACT), five concern the outermost regions, and thirteen are transnational programmes. Find them all here: https://interreg.eu/programmes. In addition to this, there are 12 programmes under the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA) and 17 under the European Neighbourhood Instrument (ENI).