The principle of partnership has been duly taken into consideration by the Programme as fundamental in the European decision-making process (Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) No 240/2014).
I In order to support an even broader active involvement of the relevant partners in the programming phase, a public consultation procedure for stakeholders and potential beneficiaries was carried out to facilitate the establishment of the strategic orientations for the Interreg 2021-2027 Programme, thus supporting the Task Force with the definition of the actions to be implemented by the Programme. The public consultation procedure has been developed in different steps: the first step of stakeholders’ consultation allowed to collect data from the territory about the thematic focus of the Programme, which have been further processed, analyzed and elaborated in the framework of the negotiations on Programme content by the Task Force in early 2021.
Moreover, in the first months of 2021, a series of interviews with institutional representatives of Programme partners was carried out as a further element for the Task Force’s brainstorming on Programme Strategic Orientations and the outcomes were included in the Territorial Socio-economic Analysis of the Programme area. In the meantime, some requirements necessary for the Programme’s development such as thematic concentration have been confirmed in the Regulations published by the European Commission.
The second step of stakeholders’ consultation process, aimed at collecting inputs on the actions to be implemented through the Programme, was performed through an online survey and allowed to gather 373 replies. Two workshops (in Slovene and Italian languages) were organized prior to launching the online survey to present it to stakeholders and to clarify its objectives. Among those 373 stakeholders participating in the online survey, 192 were from Italy and 181 from Slovenia, higher education and research organization being the most represented group. All the 10 NUTs3 regions were represented. There were also some respondents from other NUTs 3 regions outside of the Programme area.
The public consultation process has been a great opportunity to share challenges and needs with stakeholders, collect proposals and desired changes, suggestions and recommendations to be considered by the Programme. The outcomes of stakeholders’ consultations represented a reliable and shared basis to develop an analysis of the Programme area as well as the other fundamental chapters of the Programme.
The partnership approach adopted during the programming phase will be maintained also during the Programme implementation, monitoring and evaluation phases. The partnership principle will be enabled not only through the membership in the Monitoring Committee, but also involving partners and stakeholders in dialogue and strategic interaction throughout the life cycle of the Programme.
The implementation of 2021-2027 Italy-Slovenia Interreg Programme will encourage ongoing involvement of relevant partners in order to reinforce transparency of the implementation and strengthen the programme ownership among the partners.