Call for Small Project Proposals – Central Baltic Program
Opening date: 10 October 2024
Deadline date: 31 October 2024 (Application must be submitted between 10 October and 31 October 2024, by noon Eastern European Time)
Deadline model: One-step application
Project duration: 18 months
Grant amount/budget: The maximum budget allocated for a small project is EUR 213 550. In total, EUR 2 million will be reserved for the call for small project proposals.
Objectives: The proposals should respond to the following programme objectives:
- Programme Objective 6 – Improved Employment Opportunities on Labour Market
The focus of the programme objective is to strengthen and improve employment opportunities in the labour market through joint efforts in the Central Baltic region. The programme activities support less competitive groups in society to access work opportunities. This objective also tackles labour market inflexibility.
The supported activities are targeted towards all counterparts of the labour market (i.e. employers organisations, trade unions, and governments) and all sectors where work opportunities (including part-time) are available. Facilitating employment supply and demand across borders is also supported, as well as entrepreneurship development activities towards the less competitive age groups and youth.
- Programme Objective 7 – Improved Public Services and Solutions for the Citizens
The programme objective tackles obstacles related to the administrative, regulatory, language, and cultural barriers in public administration. It includes all branches of the society which are not covered by the scope of Programme Objectives 1–6.
All levels of public administration experience exchange and learning from each other are targeted, but these should lead to practical solutions, and policy improvements, and/or new or improved public services. The digitalisation of public services is supported under this programme objective. In addition, participatory processes taking place when designing improved solutions and services are supported.
How to apply:
The project application must be submitted in the Jems system between 10 and 31 October and October 2024, by noon Eastern European Time (corresponding local time 12:00 in Finland, including Åland, Estonia, Latvia, and 11:00 in Sweden).
Decisions will be made by the Monitoring Committee in mid-February 2025. Please note that decisions for both the small and regular project calls will be made during the same meeting.
Please access the key materials here. For more information, please check out the call page. The copy of the programme is here and the manual for applicants is here.
Call for peripheral and lagging areas, pioneering innovative solutions in small-scale projects – Interreg Central Europe
Interreg Central Europe is inviting public and private organisations to develop cooperation ideas that pioneer solutions for peripheral and lagging areas for the third call for proposals to be launched.
Opening date: 15 October 2024
Deadline date: 10 December 2024
Indicative budget: EUR 14 million ERDF
Objectives: The overall objective of the call will be to “pioneer solutions for peripheral and lagging areas, making them more attractive to live and work in”. Consequentially, the call will have a territorial and thematic focus and will address small-scale projects as outlined below.
Territorial challenges
The peripheral areas (including inner peripheries and rural areas which are lagging behind in central Europe territory is characterised by lower competitiveness and shrinking populations, and they face many different challenges in relation to economic development, connectivity, demographic change and social cohesion. Furthermore, there are significant disparities in the quality of governance and public services. The call aims to unlock the development potentials of peripheral and lagging areas. Projects shall deliver local and regional solutions tailored to the specific challenges of these places in line with the principles of the Territorial Agenda (TA) 2030, with lessons learned from related pilot actions serving as insights for project applicants.
To qualify for the territorial focus of the call, areas to be targeted by projects must show one or more of the following characteristics:
- Low economic potential;
- Poor access to services of general interest, often affected by demographic change;
- Lack of relational proximity, decline in significance, influence or connectivity.
These characteristics of peripherality and lagging areas are of qualitative nature and there is no specific list or map of eligible regions to be targeted by projects. Targeted areas may be rural but may also include urban areas which are lagging behind in terms of socio-economic development. Their scale and size can vary depending on the project goals, e.g. ranging from local neighbourhoods (e.g. suburbs), city districts, villages and rural communities, small-or medium-sized towns or entire regions that are suffering from peripherality or that lag behind.
Thematic focus
The call will be thematically focused and be open for proposals in four programme specific objectives (SOs):
- SO 1.2: Strengthening skills for smart specialisation, industrial transition and entrepreneurship
- SO 2.5: Greening urban mobility
- SO 3.1: Improving transport connections of rural and peripheral regions
- SO 4.1: Strengthening governance for integrated territorial development
Projects shall promote good governance through inclusive and participatory processes, on supporting socio-economic transformation by developing human capital and improving connectivity and governance in the concerned territories.
With this new project type, partners are expected to develop practical and durable outputs and solutions by testing concrete novel or pioneering solutions through pilot actions. While smaller in size and shorter in duration, small-scale projects follow the same intervention logic as our classic projects.
For more information, please access the call preview page here.