Priorities

Priority 1.  Growing cross-border business cooperation

Priority 1 Growing cross-border business cooperation is dedicated on activities which improve the preconditions for the businesses and SME’s to operate cross the border.  Objective is to create new working possibilities with cross-border cooperation for those already living in the region and also for people willing to move to the region, special focus being on young people.

Priority 2. Attractive cultural environment

Activities on culture focus on the development of new and innovative forms of culture. Cross-border environment offers new opportunities especially for cultural activities. Capacity building of cultural stakeholders is seen as a key development area including inter alia the entrepreneurships skills as a whole, knowhow on marketing and the building of cooperation networks. Capacity building activities aim also to improve the cost-effectiveness of the enterprises working on the cultural sector.

Priority 3. Clean and comfortable region to live

Clean environment and diverse and unique culture are strengths and key attraction factors of the Programme region.  Objective of the priority is to use these attraction factors as an inducement for people to stay or move to the region.

Environmental activities focus on improving the living environments – including also the built environment. The utilisation of environmental technology and expertise – including pure drinking water and waste management as well as energy efficiency offers possibilities with mutual benefit and explicitly improve the peoples living conditions. Expertise is available in the programme area though there are also large-scale development needs. Attention is also paid to the activities improving environmental awareness and knowhow.

Priority 4. Functioning border crossing

Possibility to cross the border fluently and easily is one key precondition for active cross-border cooperation – for both people and businesses. Border infrastructure forms the cornerstone for physical connections. Karelia CBC programme shall focus on removing the bottlenecks on the Programme area’s international border crossing points and this way tries to lower the threshold for people to travel cross the border. Also the conditions for goods traffic are considered.

Programme’s operations under this priority include large infrastructure investments identified as direct awards.