For more than two decades, Krynica-Zdrój in Polish Tatra Mountains welcomes political and economic leaders of Europe at the Economic Forum to exchange ideas on policies and strategies for future European development. Organised annually since 1992, the event has been acknowledged as the “Davos of Central and Eastern Europe”. In order to provide a thematic platform and meeting place for local and regional policy makers, the Forum of Regions was established in 2007 as an integral part of the event.
INTERREG IVC Information Point(IP) East, seeing the importance of the Economic Forum, especially its thematic pillar, the Forum of Regions, ensured representation of INTERREG IVC programme at the event this year already for the second time. Fruitful cooperation with the main organiser, the Warsaw Institute for Eastern European Studies, following positive experience from last year, has resulted in INTERREG IVC programme co-organising two panel discussions this September: a plenary session on “The Future of the European Regions. The Strategy of the Regional Development 2020” on 8 September, and a panel discussion on “Cohesion Policy - Driving Force of Regional Economic Growth” the following day.
Last year, INTERREG IVC IP East organised a panel discussion on “Innovation through cooperation – Making the link from policy to practice”. The panel gathered political, academic, regional and programme representatives from Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany, Poland, Slovakia and Sweden, who discussed approaches, instruments and solutions improving innovation capacity of regions through EU-wide cooperation. Further reflections on the interregional debate can be found in the Forum’s official report from 2010 (You can read about the programme intervention on page 82 and see some images on pages 77 and 79.)