News

Active pharmaceutical ingredients are found in our environment at concentrations that pose a risk to wildlife. Pharmaceuticals are used to treat humans and animals, and we cannot stop using them. Instead, the overall consumption of pharmaceuticals tends to increase with an aging population. “We must find applicable solutions to decrease the emissions of pharmaceuticals in the Baltic Sea region, and we need to work together.”, states Noora Perkola, a leading researcher in Finnish Environment Institute and leader of the project “Clear waters from pharmaceuticals” (CWPharma).

At any moment in the Baltic marine area, about 2,000 ships are transporting people, goods, but also stowaways: marine organisms from distant places, like Harris mud crabs, that colonise the Baltic Sea waters. The Interreg project COMPLETE brought together people with smart ideas how to translate the existing regulations into a working system to prevent alien species from invading the Baltic Sea.

A common challenge for the countries in the Baltic Sea region is how to produce green and climate-neutral energy. In fact, as much as 75% of the EU greenhouse gas emissions still come from energy use and production. Cooperation and sharing good practices in Interreg projects, such as LowTEMP, Baltic Integrid and Area 21, can be a game-changer in accelerating the energy transition in the region.

One of our Interreg Baltic Sea Region projects, EcoDesign Circle, reached the finals of the RegioStars Awards last year in the category of circular economy. What did the process look like? What did the project like most? And, most importantly, what was the gain for the project? Read the interview below.

There’s a story behind every project: a story of people from countries around the Baltic Sea who team up to exchange good practices or find a new way to tackle a joint challenge – together. In Interreg Baltic Sea Region, there are 140 such stories. And for the Managing Authority/Joint Secretariat staff, it is very rewarding to assist project partners from the moment their project idea starts to sprout to harvesting the achievements. Like in the case of the project cities.multimodal.

A project was set into motion in 2017 with the ambitious aim to facilitate and standardize the commercialization process of new biomarkers. Biomarkers are increasingly important in disease risk prediction, diagnosis, prognosis and treatment response. The BIC project concluded in September 2020 and brought about some tools that can help medical companies to bring new biomarkers to the market faster.

Accessibility in remote areas is a topic of growing urgency in the vast territories of the Baltic Sea region: The quality of life of elderly and young people in villages is at stake. Interreg Baltic Sea Region is providing EU funding to three cooperation projects to find solutions. The first one, MAMBA, ended in September 2020 – and delivered some very practical results.

Niklas Nienaß is an energetic young politician from the Baltic Sea region. He is a German member of the European Parliament who was elected in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, a region that is represented in 32 projects with 25 partners in the current Interreg Baltic Sea Region Programme. On the occasion of Interreg celebrating its 30th anniversary, we asked Niklas about his view on the future of Interreg cooperation.

More than seventy pictures competed in the Interreg Baltic Sea Region photo competition. Which projects were the best in illustrating transnational cooperation, grasping the essence of a project and its result, and presenting the 30th anniversary of Interreg? Congratulations to the teams of BalticRIM, RESQU2, Baltic Game Industry, EcoDesign Circle and GoSmart BSR!