Interact and CBIB+4 (the EU-funded multi-beneficiary project ‘Cross-border Institution Building – CBIB+ Phase IV), organised on 23 May 2024 a joint online workshop that gathered 41 participants representing joint secretariats/joint technical secretariats, national authorities/NIPAC offices, different services of the European Commission, managing authorities and other institutions or organisations such as associations, controllers and national contact points.
The workshop was built on a first hybrid meeting held in Tirana in May 2022, facilitated by Interact in collaboration with CBIB+3 and with support from DG REGIO and DG NEAR. The kick off meeting brought together numerous representatives from Interreg IPA and IPA-IPA CBC programmes financed by the 2021-2027 Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA III) for the first time and aimed to raise awareness about these programmes and facilitate an open exchange to identify areas to join forces and scale up capacity building efforts.
As a continuation of the first meeting, the workshop of May 2024 sought, from a technical perspective:
- to discuss cross-cutting themes to identify opportunities for collaboration and potential synergies among the programmes; and
- to exchange insights on implementation challenges among Interreg IPA and IPA-IPA CBC programmes to foster mutual learning.