Regions, cities and cooperation in times of COVID-19

On 13 October, four pan-European cooperation programmes joined forces to outline how cooperation can help to find solutions for recovery and out of the COVID-19 crisis.

In an online session 'Keep up with interregional cooperation' organised jointly by Interreg Europe, Interact, ESPON, and URBACT, we looked at how cities and regions were hit by COVID-19 and discussed solutions that have already been implemented locally and could inspire others around Europe.

The full session recording is available on the EURegionsWeek website. See what inspiration you can draw from the presentations - and share your examples with us!

During the session, four speakers shared their insights:

• Nicolas Rossignol (ESPON) outlined the preliminary results of a new ESPON study on the geography of COVID-19 outbreak and the first policy answers in European regions and cities.
  (download presentation slides)
• Marta Rofin Serrà (City of Vic/ Urbact Healthy Cities Network) presented the activities of the Urbact Healthy Cities Network and highlighted the integrated approach applied in the city of Vic (Spain) to tackle challenges raised by the COVID-19 outbreak.
  (download presentation slides)
• Merdeces Acitores (Interact) explained how the COVID-19 crisis is reflected in the world of Interreg, including project examples, networks and cooperation, and the efforts made to pool the available examples together in the keep.eu database and publications. 
  (download presentation slides)
• Nicolas Singer (Interreg Europe) continued the Interreg overview by focusing on examples from context of  Interreg Europe. He described how the COVID-19 crisis has influenced the day-to-day implementation of the projects and programme activities, shared examples of the actions taken, and introduced sources of solutions, such as our COVID-19 page and the good practice database (with a dedicated COVID-19 tag for applicable good practices).
  (download presentation slides)

Have a look at our overview to see what else we did during the 2020 online edition of the European Week of Regions and Cities.

Further information

Keen to know more? Have a look at these links for further information:

• Urbact Healthy Cities network
• Keep.eu (make use of the COVID-19 tag) 
• Interreg supports healthcare
• Interreg Inclusive Growth Network   
• Health and Ageing in cooperation programmes (factsheet) by Interact
• Report Health and Ageing in Cooperation programmes by Interact 
• Interreg Europe project results 
• Our COVID-19 page 
• Good practice database (make use of the COVID-19 tag) 
• Good practice example: Covid package for start ups
• Good practice example: Circular and civic economy during Covid-19 pandemic
• Peer review (continuously open for applications)