One of its main targets is to diminish the influence of national borders in favor of equal economic, social and cultural development of the whole territory of the European Union.
[citation needed] The Interreg goal is designed to strengthen economic, social and territorial cohesion throughout Europe, by fostering the balanced development of the continent through cross-border, transnational and inter-regional cooperation.
Interreg differs from the majority of Cohesion Policy programmes in one important respect: it involves a collaboration among authorities of two or more Member States.
Interreg measures are not only required to demonstrate a positive impact on the development on either side of the border but their design and, possibly, their implementation must be carried out on a common cross-border basis.
Strand B is the intermediate level, where generally non-contiguous regions from several different countries cooperate because they experience joint or comparable problems.
Interregional cooperation aims to improve the effectiveness of regional development policies and instruments through large-scale information exchange and sharing of experience (networks).
Period 2000-2006 Priorities for action in strand IIIA were: Proposals for transnational cooperation under IIIB had to take account of: Within this context, the priorities for action whereas follows: In the specific case of ultra-peripheral regions, transnational cooperation encourages the following initiatives: Interreg IIIC promoted interregional co-operation between regional and other public authorities across the entire EU territory and neighbouring countries.
Co-operation under Interreg IIIC gave access to experience of other actors involved in regional development policy and created synergies between "best practice" projects and the Structural Fund's mainstream programmes.
The overall aim was to improve the effectiveness of regional development policies and instruments through large-scale information exchange and sharing of experience (networks) in a structured way.
ESPON, the European Spatial Planning Observation Network, covers 31 states; Liechtenstein, Norway, Iceland and Switzerland are included as well.
It was aimed at leading the EU towards an intelligent, sustainable and integrative economy characterized by high levels of employment and production as well as by a marked social and territorial cohesion.