Cities of Culture: Guimares (Portugal) and Maribor (Slovenia)
European Green Capital: Vitoria-Gasteiz www.europeangreencapital.eu
European Commission’s Year of Water
EU Year of Solidarity between generations
This is the last briefing under the present contract.
.
FUNDING
NEW LIFE+ CALL
The 2012 LIFE+ Call was launched in Official Journal C74 of 13 March 2012, with a deadline of 26 September 012 to national competent authorities. For the text of the Call, which includes available budgets for each country, go to
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:C:2012:074:0011:0013:EN:PDF
INTERREG
Interreg IVC
This group is organizing the annual event for European Maritime Day (20 May), with a conference on 21-22 May in Gothenburg, Sweden. Topics will include regional strategies. www.interreg4c.eu
This site also has a Good Practice database and approved projects database and one for project ideas.
North Sea Region
Annual conference will be held 18-20 June in Bemerhaven and Bremen, Germany, titled “Creating a climate for change.” www.northsearegion.eu
This site also has a project ideas database and one for existing projects. One of these may be of interest to archaeologists. The project is Coast Alive, which looks at cultural and natural heritage. Information about this can be found at http://www.northsearegion.eu/ivb/projects/details/&tid=121
Baltic Sea Region
www.eu.baltic.net
The next Baltic Sea Region Programme Conference will be held on 19 – 20 September 2012, in Lillestrom, Norway. The region is developing a new Programme to start after 2014. The Joint Programming Committee, chaired by Latvia in 2012, meets for the first time in Riga on 29-30 March to begin discussions. The conference in September will look at transnational cooperation and the future of territorial cohesion 2014-2020.
North West Europe Region
The 10th call under Interreg IVB will open in April, closing 11 May. www.nweurope.eu
Central Europe Region
Fourth Call closed. Annual conference will be held on 22 May in Halle, Germany. See www.central2013.eu
Atlantic Area
No new calls advertised.
South East Europe Region
Their website now has a partner search facility. www.southeast-europe.net
ESPON
This is Europe’s Observation Network for Territorial Cohesion.
A new Call for proposals will open on 18 April, with a deadline of 13 June. More information at info@espon.eu
There will be an Info Day and Partner Cafe in Brussels on 10 May, the deadline for registration is 26 April. Go to http://www.espon.eu
CREATIVE EUROPE PROGRAMME
This will be the follow-on to Culture 2000 and is at this stage in draft form. A briefing note on this was forwarded on 5 December. Currently the programme and its budget are in discussion in Council and the European Parliament.
http://ec.europa.eu/culture/creative-europe
At present the proposals are very thin for cultural heritage, concentrating more on broadcasting, digitisation and the performing arts. It may be useful to submit comments via your governments. Alexandra Warr at English Heritage has submitted comments to the British government.
POLICY
CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION
Most of the European Commission’s press release on this is being reproduced here because it could be of interest.
Brussels, 23 March 2012 - The European Climate Adaptation Platform (CLIMATE-ADAPT), an interactive web-based tool on adaptation to climate change, goes online today at the European Environment Agency (EEA) in Copenhagen. The European Climate Adaptation Platform is a publicly accessible, web-based platform (http://climate-adapt.eea.europa.eu), designed to support policy-makers at EU, national, regional and local levels in the development of climate change adaptation measures and policies. Adaptation means anticipating the adverse effects of climate change and taking appropriate action to prevent or minimise the damage they can cause.
CLIMATE-ADAPT has been developed with the support of the European scientific and policy making community, and will help users to access, disseminate and integrate information on:
Expected climate change in Europe
The vulnerability of regions, countries and sectors now and in the future
Information on national, regional and transnational adaptation activities and strategies
Case studies of adaptation and potential future adaptation options
Online tools that support adaptation planning
Adaptation-related research projects, guideline documents, reports information sources, links, news & events.
The PESETA study of the EU Joint Research Centre has estimated that, without adaptation to climate change, if the projected climate of the 2080s were to occur today, the annual damage to the EU economy would be between €20-65bn. Such risks require us to take action now to ensure that our society is able to adapt to the consequences of climate change, moderating its negative effects and exploiting beneficial opportunities. Evidence of the economic benefits of adaptation action is mounting: the current annual economic damage for the EU due to floods alone is about €6.4bn and, according to the FP7 ClimateCost project, it is projected to increase many times over by 2050. Adaptation measures could avoid such damages at only a small fraction of their expected costs.
To be able to take the necessary decisions on how best to adapt, it is essential to have access to reliable data on the likely impact of climate change, the associated socio-economic aspects and the costs and benefits of various adaptation options. The Commission's 2009 White Paper on Adaptation emphasised that the lack of knowledge is a major obstacle to the development of successful climate change adaptation responses.
CLIMATE-ADAPT will be hosted and managed by the European Environment Agency in Copenhagen. CLIMATE-ADAPT will support the generation of the knowledge-base required to support the development of evidence-based adaptation policies. Its contribution will inform the development of a comprehensive EU Adaptation Strategy that the Commission plans to adopt in the beginning of 2013, with the goal of supporting the needs of Member States, transnational organisations and local stakeholders with appropriate actions at EU level.
THE FUTURE OF EU STRUCTURAL FUNDS 2014-2020
The European Commission on 14 March presented the "Common Strategic Framework" (CSF). It is intended to help in setting clear investment priorities for the next financial planning period from 2014 until 2020 in Member States and their regions. It will enable a far better combining of various funds to maximise the impact of EU investments. National and regional authorities will use this framework as the basis for drafting their 'Partnership Contracts' with the Commission, committing themselves to meeting Europe's growth and jobs targets for 2020.
This overview elaborates on the Framework's investment priorities and key actions for programmes which will be supported, not only through the Cohesion and Structural Funds,
but also through the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development and the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund.
URBAN FORUM
The European Commission held an Urban Forum in Brussels in February. It discussed the proposals for urban policy launched last October as part of the Cohesion Policy proposals for 2014 – 20, including an Urban Development Platform to enhance sustainable urban development, promote capacity building and exchange of urban experience. It is planned that 5% or ERDF funds should be earmarked for integrated sustainable urban development, and 0.2% for innovative actions. A number of urban projects financed by the current ERDF were highlighted at the Forum.
MARITIME SPATIAL PLANNING
A conference was held in Brussels on 26 March on how this can contribute to boosting growth. It discussed, amongst other things, best practice examples, with a range of speakers. However there appeared to be nothing scheduled on archaeology, the nearest thing being one speaker from the Danish Nature Agency. Also see note earlier under INTERREG.
SHORT NOTES
SLOVAKIA has been asked by the European Commission to comply with legislation on strategic environmental impact assessments (concern is about a road building project).
SWEDEN has been sent a reasoned opinion by the European Commission saying there are still shortcomings in the national legislation on assessing effects of plans and programmes on the environment.
WATER. Interactive water maps displaying data on surface and groundwater bodies across Europe have been recently updated by the European Environment Agency. Go to http://www.eea.europa.eu
PRIZES. Winners of 2012 EU Prizes for Cultural Heritage can be found at http://www.europanosta.org/laureates-2012
DISASTER FUND. A trio of EU member states – Germany, Netherlands and UK – are pushing for the EU’s Disaster Fund to be closed down. If the EAC has any experience of this fund being useful for heritage, do get in touch with your governments and give your opinion.
ERIH EVENTS. Annual conference 12 – 14 September, Amsterdam. www.erih.net The project organisers are currently calling for papers for this, deadline 30 April. Contact germany@erih.net There is also to be an event on 30 June in Silesia, Poland. See www.extraschicht.de/en.home
RESEARCH PROJECTS. The European Commission has published a 56 page “Survey and outcomes of cultural heritage research projects supported in the context of EU environmental research programmes from 5th to 7th Framework Research Programmes. See http://ec.europa.eu/research/environment/pdf/survey_and_outcomes_cultural_heritage.
END
AP/26/03/12
