Ca' Foscari University Venice is Lead Partner of one of the winning projects of the European cross-border cooperation Programme Interreg VI-A Italy-Slovenija, the CO ADRIA project: “North Adriatic EGTC to promote climate neutrality by 2050: strategic initiatives for energy efficiency in the region”. The 2-year project aims to promote climate neutrality in the cross-border area by coordinating a series of actions and initiatives in order to improve the approach to climate change in the key sectors of the regions involved. This coordination will ideally result in the establishment of a joint structure to manage the issue of climate neutrality on a single level of cross-border governance: an EGTC.The acronym EGTC stands for ‘European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation’, an entity created to foster cross-border, transnational and interregional cooperation between EU Member States and their regional and local authorities. An EGTC, therefore, deals with facilitating and promoting territorial cooperation between its members in order to strengthen the economic, social and territorial cohesion of the European Union.
To date, there are 89 EGTCs officially registered by the European Committee of the Regions (CoR); Italy takes part in 14 of these groups, 8 of which are based on Italian territory. CO ADRIA, therefore, in addition to the individual project objectives, will be responsible for laying the relational, strategic and bureaucratic foundations for the establishment of an EGTC that will carry on and give continuity to the activities on climate neutrality.
The Venetian university has been entrusted with the role of project leader also thanks to its many years of experience and numerous research projects and courses dedicated to the topics of sustainability and climate change, including the international training programme Ecotopia, the Venice School of Management's Sustainability Lab, and VeniSIA, an accelerator and venture builder of innovative start-ups in the Deep Tech sphere, with a focus on sustainability. In addition to the lead partner Ca' Foscari, CO ADRIA involves five transnational partners (the Municipality of Ajdovščina, the Municipality of Udine, the Urban Municipality of Koper, the Municipality of Monfalcone and Golea - Local Energy Agency of Goriška region) and seven associated partners, which support the initiative: Veneto Region - Unitary Area Programming Organisational Unit (Fesr Fsc), the Ministry of Environment, Climate and Energy, the Public Agency for Entrepreneurship Promotion and Project Development of the Municipality of Izola, the Soča Development Centre, the Regional Development Agency ROD Ajdovščina, the Association of Urban Municipalities of Slovenia and the Central Europe Initiative - Executive Secretariat. This is therefore an important transnational network within which the University Ca' Foscari of Venice can relate and act to promote new forms of action and initiatives to be established in the area.
The press conference presenting the project was held at 9.30 a.m. on Thursday 11th July at the San Giobbe Economic Campus in Venice. This was followed by the first partner meeting where all partners presented their organisations and their role in the project. Communication and reporting rules were also explained. The meeting ended with a light lunch and a small social gathering.
