Additional funds for priority 3 in the pipeline
Today, the North Sea Region Programme Monitoring Committee decided to allocate approximately €7 million in additional funds to the Programme priority 3 - Sustainable North Sea Region.
This priority covers topics of great regional importance, including climate adaptation, blue growth, marine spatial planning, and ecosystem management. Priority 3 is very popular with North Sea Region project developers, and the current allocations have almost depleted the funds available for priority 3 projects.
The Monitoring Committee decided to accommodate the need to allocate funds for new projects to be implemented under this priority by redistributing a smaller part of the funds from the priorities 1,2 and 4. This decision will now be submitted to the European Commission for final approval.
The importance of Priority 3 was further stressed today, when the European Commission released the results of an evaluation of the EU climate adaptation strategy. The Commission finds that "adapting the EU regions and economic sectors to the impacts of climate change is now more urgent than forecast in the EU’s 2013 adaptation strategy" and calls for further action to be taken within this area.