Second meeting of the Programming Committee (PC) was organised on-line on the 26 June 2020, with participation of all core regions and national authorities from Russia and Finland, and the representative of the European Commission. The meeting got information of the first consultation phase process and results, and noted the preparation work effectively started. It also approved the Regional Council of South Karelia to continue as the Managing Authority in the 2021-2027 Programme. The PC discussed and made decisions on strategic level issues, including the programme area and identification of the future objectives. The meeting got information on state of play of the regulative processes for the upcoming period and the preparation of the Financing Agreement.
2021-2027 Programme area
Cross-Border Cooperation programmes, between the European Union member states and their neighbouring countries, fall under the Interreg Regulation during the period 2021-2027. The definition of the Programme area changes accordingly. In the future, we speak about the Programme area, without so called adjoining areas. In its second meeting on June, 26 the Programming Committee (PC) of the South-East Finland – Russia 2021-2027 Programme named the current core regions; South Karelia, South-Savo and Kymenlaakso in Finland, and St. Petersburg and Leningrad region in Russia, as the 2021-2027 Programme area. In addition to wider the potential geographic and thematic content of the Programme, the PC decided to review, for example, so called Functional area –approach later during the programming process, and to evaluate the potential that it could bring to the Finnish-Russian cooperation.
Supported objectives
The Programming Committee identified following objectives to be included in further preparation of the South-East Finland – Russia 2021-2027 Programme’s priorities and contents:
Policy Objective (PO) 1 “A smarter Europe”
Policy Objective (PO) 2 “A greener low-carbon Europe”
Policy Objective (PO) 3 “A more connected Europe”
Interreg Specific Objective (ISO) 1 “A better cooperation governance for Europe”
Identified objectives are also well in line with the orientation given by the European Commission in June 2020 and the list of objectives may be still reviewed or complemented during further preparation of the Programme. The material supporting the decision-making on the objectives is made available at Programming material.
