Public AuthoritieS Supporting low-cArbon Growth in European maritime border regions
By their geography, straits of Europe are at the heart of maritime border regions. As important passage points, they concentrate flows and activities, resulting in an important carbon pressure. Not only straits’ hinterlands do not always benefit from the international maritime flows in terms of local economic development, but their populations directly suffer from carbon emissions of these flows and their related in-land activities and traffic, on which local authorities have very limited control. The maritime border is a direct obstacle to the development of efficient and integrated low-carbon strategies to prevent further pollution in straits.
Cross-border cooperation maritime programmes (INTERREG A) are the main policy instruments encouraging the development of integrated approaches over maritime borders, but the cross-cutting low-carbon challenge is often underestimated. Therefore, the objective of this project is to increase the consideration for the cross-cutting low-carbon challenge within 5 maritime border areas (9 EU regions and 1 non-EU region) by impacting 5 cross-border cooperation  maritime programmes and one regional policy. A particular attention will be given to identifying the way cross-border cooperation is managed, to integrating specific consideration for the low-carbon challenge within the different priorities of  each programme.
The project partners will work with the managing and governing authorities of the cross-border cooperation maritime programmes to ensure an actual policy change by 2019. Local stakeholders participating in cross-border initiatives will be involved in the activities of the project, to bring their territorial expertise and introduce a lasting territorial change through renewed approaches that will benefit to the partner regions' population.