Territorial cooperation programs

The territorial cooperation programs of the 2021-2027 period follow a relatively standard structure, including the following elements in particular:

• 5 priorities or strategic objectives (PO, Policy Objectives):1. a smarter/competitive Europe, 2. A greener/resilient/low-emission Europe, 3. A more connected Europe, 4. A more social Europe, 5. A Closer Europe;To which are added specific priorities related to territorial cooperation (better governance of cooperation and a safer Europe) and allocations for technical assistance to programs;
• More than 40 specific regional policy objectives (RSOs):represent a declination of the strategic objectives and are indicated (in the planning documents and in the following sheets) by the number of the relevant strategic objective and a progressive Roman numeral (e.g.: 1.i.; 1.ii.; 2.i.; 3.iv… etc.);
• 182 policy areas:each of which can be associated with one of the strategic goals, but in a non-unique relationship (it is possible to associate a policy area with any of the strategic and specific goals). The intervention sectors are simply numbered with a consecutive code, 001 to 182.

The specificity of each territorial cooperation program is given:

• from the combination of strategic goals, specific objectives and areas of intervention chosen to address the typical challenges of the target area;
• by the relevant financial allocations, which indicate the indicative sectoral distribution of projects to be launched under the program.

While a careful reading of all reference documents is advisable, the combined analysis of these two variables provides an indicative idea of the basic choices made within each territorial cooperation program, as well as the possibilities it offers to those interested in proposing projects.

The following intentionally concise prospectuses thus emphasize two main elements: 1) the links and documents to consult to learn about and work on the program; 2) the thematic structure and specific areas of intervention of the program.

For those interested and for a better understanding of territorial cooperation programs, we point out theexistence of a common framework of indicators, the elements of which are taken up within the programming documents (codes RCO for Output indicators, RCR for Result indicators) and which constitute a further declination of them. Their analysis provides additional insight into the type of actions, projects and beneficiaries considered by the different components of each program.