The Commissioner for Regional Policy, Danuta Hübner, announced on the 21st December 2007 the adoption of 35 programmes this month under the "European territorial cooperation" objective of Cohesion policy. These programmes, mainly funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), provide support for cross-border and transnational cooperation among the Member States. Turkey, the Western Balkans countries, Norway, Switzerland, Belarus, Ukraine and the Russian Federation also take part in some of these programmes with the support of the new Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA) and the European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument (ENPI).

The Transnational Programmes recently adopted:

• The "Central European Space" programme concerns Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia and Ukraine.
• The "South-East European Space" programme involves eight Member States (Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Hungary, Austria, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia) and eight non-Member States (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, the Republic of Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia and Ukraine).
• The "Baltic Sea" programme: in addition to the eight EU member states in the region (Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Germany), Norway, Belarus and the Russian Federation also participate in this important programme.
• The "Mediterranean" programme involves Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Slovenia, Greece, Cyprus, Malta and the United Kingdom (Gibraltar) with the participation of Croatia and Montenegro.

The Cross-border programmes adopted in December and the EU investment involved
These largest programmes for cohesion undertaken within Europe are:

• Hungary-Romania (€ 224.5 million)
• Czech Republic-Poland (€ 219.4 million)
• Romania-Bulgaria (€ 217.8 million)
• Saxony-Czech Republic (€ 207.4 million)

More information
Details on regional policy can be found via the European Union official website www.europa.eu