Cooperation between regions is a core dimension of both the European and the Nordic 'added value' concept. The European Community initiative for cooperation, Interreg, was launched in 1990 with the object of strengthening economic and social cohesion by encouraging cross-border, transnational and interregional cooperation.
The Interreg initiative consists of three strands, strand A (cross-border cooperation), strand B (transnational cooperation), and strand C (interregional cooperation). Somewhere between 50 % and 80% of national allocations to the Interreg initiative are set aside for strand A.
Special emphasis has been placed on integrating remote regions and those that share external borders with new or prospective EU candidate countries. Thus, non-EU member countries may also participate in territorial cooperation at the European level.
Until they joined the EU in 2004, the new member states of eastern and central Europe benefited from a separate cross-border cooperation programme, PHARE (Pologne, Hongrie Assistance à la Reconstruction Economique), which was subsequently expanded to encompass the whole of Central and Eastern Europe.
An example of interreg cooperation seen from a Swedish perspective.