“The sea as a connector”: a look back at the maritime session at the EuRegionsWeek 2024
Entitled ‘Building strong maritime cooperation for sustainable growth in coastal and insular regions’, the session brought together :
– Marie-Antoinette Maupertuis, in her capacity as MOT vice-president for maritime and specific cooperation and as president of the Corsican Assembly;
– Mathias Lindström, director of the Kvarken Council EGTC, the only EGTC to have been established in the Nordic countries around a maritime border;
– Mercedes Acitores, from the Interact programme, which supports Interreg programmes;
– Karsten Uno Petersen, representative of the Committee of the Regions’ COTER and rapporteur on the future of European territorial cooperation;
– and Jean-Pierre Halkin, representing the views of the European Commission (DG REGIO).
‘It’s quite astonishing that today we find ourselves lobbying for maritime cooperation, even though throughout history the sea has always been the simplest way of connecting and trading between one city and another’, began Karsten Uno Petersen, referring to the history of the Hanseatic cities, particularly in Denmark.
And Marie-Antoinette Maupertuis continued: ‘22 out of 27 Member States have a maritime border. We are economic areas of production and exchange of ideas and goods. Our cooperation deserves to be recognised in the same way as cooperation over land’.
Jean-Pierre Halkin stressed that to protect the seas and their ecosystems, we need to act at the level of sea basins, which are transnational in nature. These ‘cross-border public goods’ often depend on activities carried out on land, which are the main sources of maritime pollution. These seas are changing, but they also represent potential for the production of offshore renewable energy.
Mercedes Acitores insisted on the fact that, even if cooperation requires funding, it is also a question of finding more intelligent ways of ‘planning together’. She also pointed out that, for some Interreg programmes considered to be ‘maritime’, this dimension is not so present or is seen by the project partners as being transversal to all the activities. In addition, it is now essential to question the ‘all-tourism’ model for the economic development of coastal areas, in parallel with the digitalisation of island areas.
Mathias Lindström was keen to point out that current areas of cooperation are sometimes too large. Work is needed to define the ‘functional areas’ where the main issues are concentrated (islands, straits, etc.) in order to redistribute funding more effectively. He gave the example of the cooperation between Umeå (Sweden) and Vaasa (Finland), now linked by an innovative, low-carbon ferry service, which would not exist without the initial support of Interreg.
Jean-Pierre Halkin referred to the consultations on Post-27 launched by the Commission, which wants to see the seas of tomorrow as ‘connectors’, while pointing out that Interreg is now recognised by stakeholders as a unique tool, enabling multi-level, place-based and multi-sectoral approaches.
Numerous testimonies from the audience (Interreg Maritime programmes, DG MARE, CPMR, etc.) enriched and continued the discussions, in particular by stressing the need to identify new methods of cooperation with the United Kingdom since Brexit and the disappearance of the Interreg programmes; the complementarities and synergies between macro-regional strategies and sea basin strategies; and the challenges, including geopolitical challenges, in the Mediterranean Sea.
The full replay of the session is available here: https://frontend.cor.smv.cloud/en/sessions/reference/euregionsweek-2024-building-strong-maritime-cooperation
