Project Summary

The Facility Point (FP) enters a new period of support to the EUSAIR governance structures with an extended partnership forming a network of institutions from all EUSAIR participating countries. In line with the Priority 4 of the Interreg IPA ADRION programme, the FP covers four functions:

• Administrative and technical support to the EUSAIR governance meetings at all levels
• Communication and Coordination
• Support to decision making and capacity development of the implementers at their levels
• Monitoring and evaluation of EUSAIR.

The overall project objective is to facilitate the coordination, communication and implementation of EUSAIR by enhancing the institutional capacity of EUSAIR governance structures, fostering cross-pillar cooperation, increasing the visibility of EUSAIR and by monitoring and evaluating the progress of implementation of joint priorities.

Specifically, the project will:

• Support effective and efficient functioning of EUSAIR governance structures.
• Support smooth implementation of the Strategy and Action Plan through harmonised and effective internal procedures and communication, effective cross-pillar coordination, increased visibility of EUSAIR through communication with stakeholders, and cross-macroregional cooperation.
• Provide EUSAIR governance structures with tools for evidence-based decision-making and build internal institutional capacities.
• Monitor and evaluate the implementation of the Strategy and the Action Plan and recommend possible changes in their implementation.

The intended change the Facility Point aspires to achieve:

• Strengthened institutional capacity of the EUSAIR governance structures and stakeholders for multi-level and cross-sector governance and cooperation across borders in the Adriatic Ionian region.
• Increased ownership, recognised added value and enhanced visibility of the EUSAIR.

The project main outputs:

• Facility Point network comprises 11 public institutions from national, regional and local level from 10 EUSAIR participating countries providing effective and quality administrative, operational and content support to the EUSAIR governance structures.
• Functional EUSAIR governance structures. The FP facilitates effective functioning of the EUSAIR Governing Board, Thematic Steering Groups and the Youth Council.
• EUSAIR macro regional exchange and cooperation. The Facility Point partners bring together macro-region's stakeholders to exchange on policies and practices related to the implementation of the Strategy and Action Plan, and to foster macro-regional cooperation and innovation.
• EUSAIR Communication actions are produced to foster effective collaboration of the EUSAIR governance structures with different EUSAIR target groups and to improve external communication on the EUSAIR achievements.
• FACILITY POINT capacity building comprises a range of capacity building actions to strengthen the capacity of key implementers for informed decision-making.
• EUSAIR monitoring and evaluation system supports the EUSAIR governance structures in monitoring of the Strategy implementation and serves as a tool for collecting lessons learned for steering future implementation.

The proposed project was designed considering key results, experience and lessons learned from the implementation of the Facility Point strategic project in the period 2016-2023 as well as recent developments related to the implementation of the EUSAIR and its Action Plan.

Transnational cooperation is at the essence of macro-regional strategies. The EUSAIR participating countries are most diverse in terms of socioeconomic development, religous, cultural, political and other aspects. They gather EU Member States, EU candidate countries and one third country. Facilitating enlargement became one of top priority topics.

The basic approach to address the four functions assigned to the FP is on establishing a sound network of partners operating in all EUSAIR participating countries to enable close and effective support to key members of the governing structures in respective countries and at macro-regional level.

The project capitalizes on solutions from 2016-2023 period, such as the monitoring and evaluation system, the EUSAIR website and EUSAIR social media channels, as well as the relevant accumulated knowledge, which will be upgraded in accordance with newly emerging needs and opportunities.

The FP is extended to two more countries, one new Pillar and one new structure - Youth Council. More emphasis is put on the knowledge management, strategic decision-making support, capacity building and country level communication. EUSAIR Contact Points network for country stakeholders will be formed. More efforts are devoted to coordination and efficient cooperation, also in view of achieving synergies among the three governance support projects.