First meeting of PROWAD LINK partners

Following INTERREG’s approval of the Expression of Interest (EoI) for funding of the project “PROWAD LINK”, the project partners representing nine organizations in the Wadden Sea sat together in Hamburg on 11 November to discuss the next steps towards submitting a full application. The project has been developed in cooperation with partners from across the Wadden Sea region as well as the United Kingdom (World Heritage Jurassic Coast and Wash/North Norfolk) and Norway (World Heritage Western Norwegian Fjords). Among other things, PROWAD LINK aims to incite small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the North Sea Region to contribute to nature protection areas such as World Heritage sites and thus unlock economic benefits. The project will build on the results of the highly successful 2010-2014 PROWAD project, which developed a sustainable tourism strategy for the Wadden Sea World Heritage Destination.

“This meeting was an essential step”, says Harald Marencic, project leader and Deputy Executive Secretary of the Common Wadden Sea Secretariat (CWSS): “Since we handed in the EoI, new potential partners have emerged and new circumstances have emerged. We now need to adapt the project accordingly so that each partner can identify with PROWAD LINK. The meeting helped us stay on the right track.”

The full application needs to be filed with the INTERREG V B North Sea Region Programme (NSRP) by 1 February 2017. If approved, the PROWAD LINK project is expected to be launched in July 2017 and will receive up to 1.55 million euros from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) as co-financing (total budget 3.1 million euros) for a period of 3 years.