The Saxon State Ministry of Environment and Agriculture (the programme's managing authority) will be, as with the current programme, in charge of the programme management, the partner on the Czech side is the Ministry of the Environment of the CR (the programme's national authority).
Almost € 158 million will be allocated from the European Regional Development Fund.
The new programme will again focus mainly on regional and local projects with cross-border importance. When selecting projects, great emphasis will be again put on their actual cross-border impacts and projects will be selected which can prove a significant positive impact on the Czech and Saxon border areas.
Currently there is a discussion on the content focus, which resulted in the following themes (thematic objectives):
- Promoting climate change adaptation, risk prevention and management;
- Preserving and protecting the environment and promoting resource efficiency;
- Investing in education, skills and lifelong learning;
- Improving institutional capacities and promoting effective public administration.
Planning of the future of the European Territorial Cooperation takes place under Regulations of the European Parliament and of the Council (Nos. 1303/2013, 1301/2013 and 1299/2013, published in the Official Journal of the EU:
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/ ).
The principle of a lead partner has been maintained who will bear overall responsibility for the project implementation. Each lead partner must have at least one foreign cooperation partner. The regulations now lay down a condition of fulfilment of at least three cooperation criteria of four defined (joint project preparation, joint implementation, joint staff and joint financing), unlike in the previous programme when it was sufficient for a project to meet two of the criteria. The rules for the fulfilment of project indicators, which will determined for each investment priority and every project will have to contribute to their fulfilment, have also become stricter.
A draft programming document is currently under preparation based on objections by the European Commission, and preparation of the implementation document is in progress.
You can obtain up-to-date information from the administrator of the programme preparation, Mr. Stanislav Rataj (stanislav.rataj@mmr.cz). Other information about the new cooperation programme Free State of Saxony – Czech Republic 2014–2020 is also available on the programme's website:
www.sn-cz2020.cz.