Coastal view with ocean waves crashing against rocks, grassy cliff with wildflowers, and a row of houses along the edge under a partly cloudy sky.

Story 26 August 2026

Atlantic cooperation: from shared challenges to shared solutions

As regions adjust their European Union programmes to new priorities and begin discussing future funding priorities, Atlantic cooperation is helping them move faster. Across Ireland, France, Spain and Portugal, Interreg projects are delivering tested solutions that regional funds can scale up

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Authors

Ana Magalhães

Communication manager

Atlantic Area

Ilze Ciganska

Interact

Along Europe’s Atlantic coast, regions face shared challenges: stronger storms, water stress, pressure to decarbonise ports and industry, and growing concerns about energy security.

Through the Atlantic Maritime Strategy and Interreg cooperation, Atlantic regions have worked together to address common maritime and environmental challenges. The solutions developed are already helping to guide practical investment decisions across the regions.

What the mid-term review changed

Europe’s investment landscape has shifted. When the 2021-2027 funding period's Cohesion policy programmes were designed, few anticipated the war in Ukraine, the energy crisis, or the scale of recent floods and droughts.

In April 2025, the European Commission launched a mid-term review of cohesion policy. Five reinforced priorities followed: competitiveness, defence and security, affordable housing, water resilience and the energy transition. Revised programmes are expected to roll out in 2026.

Managing authorities need to deliver new measures quickly while limiting investment risk. Designing new solutions from scratch takes time. Adopting and adapting solutions already tested elsewhere is faster.

How Atlantic programmes responded

Atlantic cooperation provides part of the answer. Through the Atlantic Region Managing Authorities Network, known as ARMA, managing authorities from Interreg and regional or national European Regional Development Fund programmes coordinate their work across the Atlantic region. Led by the Interreg Atlantic Area programme, with DG Regio and the Interact programme actively involved, ARMA provides a platform to align priorities, exchange knowledge and promote complementarities between cooperation and regional funding programmes.

We firmly support a vision of European integration in which regions and inter-regional collaboration play a pivotal role in delivering enhanced prospects for our citizens, businesses, and organisations, particularly amid the current, complex landscape of transformation driven by the digital, energy, and environmental changes. Álvaro Santos Chair of the Interreg Atlantic Area Programme

As regional programmes were revised, ARMA coordinated a review of existing Interreg project results to identify solutions that directly support the new priorities. Four programmes, including Interreg Atlantic Area, Interreg North-West Europe, Interreg South-West Europe (SUDOE) and the France–Spain–Andorra programme (POCTEFA), identified fifteen projects whose tested outputs are ready for regions to adopt.

What the portfolio covers

These results are clustered around three of the new priorities: energy transition (hydrogen production, offshore renewable energy testing and cross-border energy coordination), water resilience (micro-hydropower, flood prediction, peatland restoration and cross-border water governance) and industrial transition (bio-based innovation support, circular construction and SME digital and sustainability tools).

The portfolio also includes results relevant to the defence and security priority. In the Pyrenees, the Interreg POCTEFA project SPIRAL is developing a shared cross-border early warning system for landslides.

The system includes a threshold-based forecasting capability that delivers predictions in 24 – 48 hours window using real-time meteorological inputs, a harmonised cross-border inventory of slope movement events, and susceptibility mapping across Catalonia, France and Andorra.

Practical instruments for managing authorities

Each of these projects has produced specific outputs that managing authorities can use when designing new investment measures. These include financial viability calculators, procurement templates with reuse targets, innovation voucher schemes, cross-border governance frameworks, real-time monitoring systems, digital management tools and tested pilot infrastructures.

By experimenting across borders first, Interreg projects absorb part of the technical and regulatory risk, as well as test and develop solutions that can be further implemented through regional and national funds.

The following articles in this series describe these results in detail, covering energy, water resilience and industrial transition.