Following the kick-off event held in Marseille last June, the 1st Call of the transnational cooperation programme INTERREG MED has been officially opened on September 1st for the submission of Modular Projects Proposals.

INTERREG MED includes a total of 57 regions in 10 different EU Member States and three candidate countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro), bordering the Mediterranean Sea from Greece to Portugal. For Italy, all regions are eligible except South Tyrol.
The goal of the programme is to promote sustainable growth in the Mediterranean area by strengthening innovative ideas and practices, reasonable use of resources and supporting social integration through integrated cooperation approach based on territory.

To achieve this objective INTERREG MED funds projects that will provide for the exchange of experience and knowledge, and that will contribute to improve regional and territorial practices by transnational cooperation, thus involving national, regional and local authorities, as well as other local actors in the participating regions.

The program has four areas of action and seven specific objectives (SO):

AXIS 1. Promoting Mediterranean innovation capacity to develop smart and sustainable growth

SO 1.1: To increase transnational activity of innovative clusters and networks of key sectors of the MED area

AXIS 2. Fostering low-carbon strategies and energy efficiency in specific MED territories: cities, islands and rural areas

SO 2.1: To raise capacity for better management of energy in public buildings at transnational level

SO 2.2: To increase the share of local renewable energy sources in energy strategies and plans in specific MED territories

SO 2.3: To increase capacity to use existing low-carbon transport systems and multimodal connections among them

AXIS 3. Protecting and promoting Mediterranean natural and cultural resources

SO 3.1: To enhance the development of a sustainable and responsible coastal and maritime tourism in the MED area

SO 3.2: To maintain biodiversity and natural ecosystems through strenghtening the management and networking of protected areas

AXIS 4. Enhancing Mediterranean governance (this axis will not be open for the 1st Call)

SO 4.1: To support the process of strengthening and developing multilateral coordination frameworks in the Mediterranean for joint responses to common challenges

The entities admitted to participate differ for each specific objective.
In general, eligible categories are as follows: local, regional and national authorities, universities, research organizations, educational institutions, businesses (including SMEs), business support centers, associations, interest groups (including NGOs) and cultural organizations.

Modular projects, a novelty introduced for the 2014-2020 programming cycle, may cover Axes 1, 2, 3 and may be composed of one or more modules.

Modules are of three different types:

M1. Studying
M2. Testing
M3. Capitalising

The first call will be open to project proposals for M1 only, M2 only and M3 only, or as in the following combinations: M1+2 (Studying and testing); M2+3 (Testing and capitalizing).

The Interreg MED Programme is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and by the Instrument for Pre-Accession funds (IPA).
The overall programme budget amounts to around 275.9 million euro, while the indicative amount earmarked for this call is:
ERDF allocation: 75 millions of euro (25M€ for each priority axis)
IPA allocation: 3 millions of euro (1M€ for each priority axis).
The co-financing rate for the ERDF partners will be of 85%.

The deadline for the submission of applications is 2 November 2015.

On November 11, after the closing of the 1st call for modular projects, will be opened the 2nd notice concerning Horizontal projects.
Horizontal projects are monitored by the Programme Authorities and have the aim to promote communication and capitalization of several MED modular projects, in order to better highlight the interests of the programme as well as of the transnational projects themselves.

Proposals must be submitted through the electronic system Synergie CTE.
The Joint Secretariat of the program invites applicants planning to submit their proposals to create a login for the on-line tool Synergies CTE within the month of September (the creation of logins after that date will be still possible).

Further information and official documents concerning the 1st call are available on the INTERREG MED website: http://interreg-med.eu.