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About the organiser
The Széchenyi Programme Office (SZPO) is a public non-profit making organisation owned by the Prime Minister’s Office of Hungary – among other professional activities – acting as hosting institution for INTERREG programme implementation bodies in Hungary.
Such as the Joint Secretariats of 5 cross-border cooperation (CBC) programmes (Hungary-Slovakia, Austria-Hungary, Hungary-Croatia, Hungary-Serbia and Hungary-Romania-Slovakia-Ukraine), Info Points of 3 CBC programmes (Austria-Hungary, Slovenia-Hungary and Romania-Hungary).
The First Level Control units in all INTERREG programmes (7 CBC, 2 transnational and 2 interregional) where Hungary participates. SZPO has more than 20 years wide professional experience with INTERREG programmes (also brought from the predecessor institution VATI Nonprofit Ltd), gathered through more financial periods.
What is the Art of Cooperation
Conference for Central and Eastern European Interreg Programmes
Central and Eastern Europe is a region with the highest density of borders on the continent, which results in a high concentration of Interreg cross-border cooperation (CBC) and transnational cooperation Programmes, involving the majority of Interreg funding mechanisms as well (ERDF, IPA and NDICI).
Most of the Interreg Programmes are relatively new, implementing in 2021-2027 the third or fourth generation of Programmes. Cumulated with the socio-economic context of Central and Eastern Europe, this feature determines a different level of maturity as compared with the Western European Interreg Programmes.
Because of the high density of borders, the majority of the population from Central and Eastern Europe live in a CBC Programme area. Moreover, in many situations, specific territories are covered in more than one or even two CBC Programmes. Not the least, due to its geographical and geopolitical position, the Central and Eastern Europe region concentrates the highest number of IPA and NEXT Programmes.
All these characteristics ask for an enhanced communication and cooperation among territorial cooperation Programmes from Central and Eastern Europe, since they can build on each other’s experience and expertise. Széchenyi Programme Office initiated such a process by organizing a conference dedicated to the most stringent challenges the Interreg Programmes are facing at the moment.
Therefore, this event was meant to provide a platform for exchanges and dialogue between the Programmes from Central and Eastern Europe. The intention was to facilitate a dialogue which, due to the physical proximity and similar interest, may evolve in the future and create closer ties among the Interreg programmes from the region.
The conference, named Art of Cooperation, was held in Budapest on the 17-18th of October 2023, based on a series of parallel panel discussions. When selecting the topics of the panels, the current phase of Programme implementation was taken into account, trying to identify the most interesting and challenging tasks Interreg Programmes are facing at this stage, as the enhanced implementation of the simplified costs options by the different programmes, the control systems, the challenges faced by the new generation of IPA and NEXT Programmes, or the governance of the electronic platforms used by the programmes in the area.
On the second day of the conference, the Programmes hosted by Hungary presented the results of 2014-2020 programming period as well as introduced the specificities and opportunities of the new programmes. The two-day event was accompanied by a project fair with the project beneficiaries as exhibitors selected by different Programmes. The fair was a great opportunity for the dissemination of project results and networking.
