Interreg Baltic Sea Region reveals the magic powers of Interreg: incubating change, driving synergies, and ensuring benefits for all. This is how to do it transnationally!
Interreg transnational cooperation through a magic lens
- 06 June 2025
As Raffaele Fitto, European Executive Vice-President for Cohesion and Reforms, highlighted in his welcome video, Interreg stands out as a symbol of European integration. Nearly 300 enthusiasts gathered in Tampere, Finland, on 20-22 May 2025, to discover how this symbol turns into real-life benefits. So, what have the conference participants learned together?
- With 129 funded projects involving 1200+ partners, Interreg delivers 144 tested solutions for the Baltic Sea region. Cooperation is made easy, as 82% of project budgets use Simplified Cost Options.
- Interreg is key to tackling emerging topics like resilience, safety, mental health, climate response, and smart resource reuse.
- By incubating change, Interreg helps the region stay ahead of reforms and move from ideas to tested solutions ready to scale up.
- Interreg builds synergies across projects, programmes, and policies, breaking silos, embracing partnerships across sectors and governance levels, and infusing project results into policies.
- People both actively contribute to and benefit from Interreg results every day: through better public services, stronger communities, cleaner water, competitive economies, new circular practices, and more.
- With eight project platforms in motion, the first operations of strategic importance, Interreg Baltic Sea Region paves the way for even broader impacts. A new call for project platforms is now open, ready to complement and expand these efforts.
All this is possible thanks to transnational cooperation. This is also where the Interreg magic lies: in bringing people across borders, sectors and governance levels around a shared cause, and by this, transforming scattered initiatives into coherent progress.
And after hearing from the conference guests and the voices gathered through public consultations, one message stands out: there is a strong wish for Interreg to continue and remain a cornerstone of our peaceful and prosperous future – one built on a resilient, secure, green, and climate-neutral Baltic Sea region.
