The Interreg post-27 Harvesting Event, organised by the Interact programme together with DG Regio of the European Commission, took place in Brussels on 25-26 November. 

More than 200 representatives of the 86 Interreg territorial cooperation programmes of the European Union and the Member States discussed the seven key issues affecting the future of Interreg in the coming period 2028-2034: cooperation at the external borders of the Union, improved governance, flexibility and adaptability of the programmes, synergies and cooperation (capitalisation/macro-regional and sea basin strategies), performance-based implementation, simplified costs and other elements such as the maritime dimension of Interreg, data management, common indicators, etc. 

Furthermore, experiences have been exchanged on the public consultations carried out by the programmes on the future of Interreg and some provisional conclusions have been put forward. The work will be continued with a further pooling of experience between the Commission and the Interreg programmes in March 2025 at the Interreg GO! meeting. 

In addition to actively participating in the Harvesting Event, representatives of the Managing Authority and the Joint Secretariat of the INTERREG Madeira-Azores-Canary Islands (MAC) programme held a meeting with the other Interreg programmes of the EU’s Outermost Regions (ORs) and the European Commission at the Canary Islands Government office in Brussels. At this meeting, specific issues were discussed on the future of the Interreg ORs programmes as external borders of the Union and progress was made on the materialisation of the ERDF-NDICI funds through joint calls for proposals between the two funds.