The first annual Interreg North Sea Region Programme Conference, after COVID. Thus, the event was fully booked and more than 200 project representatives, politicians, and programme representatives attended the conference on November 29th and 30th, 2023.
The event started with the evening reception at the Rotterdam town hall for projects on November 29th. 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, together with the Lead Partner Port of Skagen, participated in the opening event and used the opportunity to network with policy and project stakeholders accordingly.
On November 30th, the programme started off with very interesting study visits. Port of Hamburg Marketing and the Lead Partner of REDII Ports attended the study visits. Port of Hamburg Marketing participated in study visit number 2, which looked at circular (blue) economy and provided some very interesting insights.
Thereafter, back on the 'SS Rotterdam' (due to foggy weather), instead of a site-visit, a presentation of the concept of a floating farm (and potential variants in other scenarios or cities) https://floatingfarm.nl/ was presented.
After the study visit, the stakeholders were offered a networking lunch on 'SS Rotterdam'. Port of Hamburg Marketing and the Lead Partner used the opportunity to exchange ideas and information with other stakeholders, distributed flyers on some of the pilots to participants, and talked to the joint secretariat of the Interreg North Sea Region Programme.
The afternoon 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.
The wonderful conference location 'SS Rotterdam'.
Study visit number 2, providing interesting insights into (blue) circular economy.
officially kicking off the first annual conference, post Covid.
Interesting panel discussion towards the end of the conference programme