INTRODUCTION OF THE PROGRAM INTERREG V-A GREECE – BULGARIA 2014 – 2020
Cross border cooperation policy is about establishing links across national boundaries to enable joint approach to common problems and opportunities. The Cooperation Programme between Greece and Bulgaria actually constitutes a set of proposals for the interventions envisaged under the terms of the cross border cooperation strand of the European Territorial Cooperation objective of the Structural Fund policies for the period 2014-2020. The new Programme, as the successor to the 2007-2013 Programme that operates between the two countries until the end of 2015, will attempt to capitalize on the experience gained and the extensive knowledge that has been obtained by both the participants and the implementation structures, in order to bring cooperation to a new level.
The Programme is designed to address the main challenges identified by the diagnostic Report in the cross-border area, where collaboration is either necessary or expected to produce significant added value by either capitalizing on past results, by being complementary to mainstream Programmes and the “smart specialization” strategies or by exploiting existing institutional capacities and/or expressed demands.
The Programme covers the following eligible regions: