Joint contractors' meeting for IEE and INTERREG projects

18-19 May 2011

Engaging with Cities and Regions

On 18-19th May, a joint contractors' meeting was organised by the EACI jointly with the INTERACT secretariat in Viborg. The meeting was held in Brussels and gathered around 117 participants from all over Europe. The participants included beneficiaries from ongoing IEE "Local Action" projects and from DG REGIO's INTERREG projects together with project officers from the two programmes.

ManagEnergy was present at the meeting offering information on the initiative's tools and services.

The key objectives of this joint meeting were:

Enabling contractors from IEE and INTERREG projects to network and get to know each other
Facilitating exchange of experiences and lessons learnt between project teams
Identifying and disseminating good practices from projects to projects
Exploitation and dissemination of projects' results
Encouraging collaboration between projects

33 representatives from the Local and Regional Energy Agencies (recently established with IEE funding) , 19 representatives of the 21 "Local Action" IEE projects, 11 representatives from Joint Programme Secretariats, 19 representatives of relevant projects from INTERREG B and C and INTERACT representative, met for one and half days in a mix of plenary sessions and parallel workshops, in order to network and discuss technical topics of interest: energy baselines, SEAP development, SEAP implementation and training for local politicians and technical staff.

Representatives from DG ENER and DG REGIO presented the latest news from a policy perspective, and other relevant initiatives including the Covenant of Mayors, ManagEnergy and ISLE-PACT were also presented.

Positive feedback from the participants confirmed that this exchange will help the project teams, who are keen to benefit from the lessons learnt and to capitalise on synergies, thus delivering faster and with higher impacts.

All presentations were published on the EACI website and the ManagEnergy site.

The joint IEE and INTERREG contractors' meeting is featuring in the latest INTERACT magazine.