At its meeting on 28th March, the Programme Monitoring Committee 2020 endorsed the final draft Operational Programme for the Northern Periphery and Arctic 2014-2020 Programme. The document has been developed over the past 18 months, with input from national and regional stakeholders. To ensure due diligence, the process was followed by Ex Ante evaluators, who provided valuable input throughout the process. With the endorsement of the Operational Programme, an important milestone in the programming process has been reached.  

After some final edits, the document will go through a national adoption process in each of the programme partner countries. It is expected that this process will be concluded by the end of May, after which the Operational Programme will be submitted to the European Commission. 

The new programme will be launched at this year’s Annual Conference, “Cool North” on 30th September near Inverness, Scotland. If everything goes according to plan, this event would also mark the opening of the first call for application, to be pre-announced in June. On 1st October, a How to Apply seminar for applicants will be organised at the same venue. 

If the European Commission adopts the programme during the autumn, the first projects will be approved at the December meeting of the Monitoring Committee.