GSC at the North Sea Region Programme Annual Conference

For projects, the event started with the evening reception at the Rotterdam town hall on November 29^th. Here, stakeholders were welcomed and then offered the opportunity to network with like-minded people. Since France is relatively new to the programme, the participation rate of French stakeholders was relatively high. Port of Hamburg Marketing participated in the opening event and used the opportunity to network with policy and project stakeholders accordingly.

On November 30^th, the programme started off with very interesting study visits. Port of Hamburg Marketing attended the Blue Economy study visit 2, which looked at circular (blue) economy and provided some very interesting insights.

Thereafter, back on the SS Rotterdam (due to foggy weather), the site-visit was finalised by a presentation of the concept of a floating farm (and potential variants in other scenarios or cities) https://floatingfarm.nl/.

After the study visit, the stakeholders were offered a networking lunch on SS Rotterdam. Port of Hamburg Marketing used the opportunity to exchange ideas and information with other stakeholders and talk to the joint secretariat of the Interreg North Sea Region Programme.

The afternoon then focused on interesting keynote speeches on the transformation of Europe (Caroline de Gruyter), followed by a keynote on Megatrends of the future (Dr. Irene McMaster), and finally a keynote on the perspective of the Commission (Nathalie Verschelde).

The second part of the afternoon focussed on a regional-, North Sea Commission-, and a project perspective. The province of Zuid-Holland, the North Sea Commission and SUSTAIN-3D provided an insight into their point of view on the importance of Cohesion Policy and transnational collaboration and cooperation.

Coffee breaks and other opportunities were used to further engage in stakeholder engagement and exchange of experience.