New Interreg Europe program about to be launched

OptiWaMag involves 6 EU regions with a shared ambition to accelerate the scaling up of waste management innovation that can support active and innovative environment and resource efficiency and secure the triple win of economic growth, more sustainable ecosystem services and improved wellbeing of Europe’s citizens.

Focusing on these scopes, the policy project’s primary goal is to improve Structural Funds’ policies and implementation related to waste management and enhance regional and interregional ecosystems. OptiWaMag recognises that effective, policy shaping outcomes require enhanced cooperation between involved stakeholders. The policy project will thus incorporate interregional collaboration, involving a wide range of expert stakeholders, which comprises exchange of good practices, mutual learning, peer assessment, knowledge transfer, targeted coaching and collective, co-designed policy development. It will deliver its results through interlinked project activities and outputs during 3 sequential steps: 1) Identification and Analysis; 2) Interregional Mutual Learning; 3) Knowledge Transfer and Action Planning. Steps 1 and 3 also include assessments of policy enhancement and learning performance. Wide dissemination of good practices and lessons are the backbone of OptiWaMag. The primary outputs include: – The project self, peer and expert assessment tools and findings focused on regions’ strengths, weaknesses, policy priorities and policy enhancements – A Framework Strategy for developing evidence based and co-designed policies, programmes and implementation methods and for identifying the best method to improve policy instruments; – 6 Regional Action Plans (informed by the Framework Strategy, pre and interim self-assessments and Advisory Board case study) to enhance the implementation of regional policy instruments across Europe.