Project title

South Baltic Four Corners - a Developing Region in the Centre of the Enlarged Europe

Lead applicant

Southeast Skåne Committee of Cooperation

Contact person

Malin Ullman

E-mail

malin.ullman@syd.se.carrefour.org

Homepage

     

Address

Phone

+46 411 57 78 39

Fax

Measure:

Problem to be addressed:

People moving out from the regions to bigger and nearby cities affect all the peripheral regions of the South Baltic. For stopping of this negative trend it is necessary to ameliorate for the existing and future enterprises (SME:s) of the regions to be able to develop their business by transnational cooperation and competition, aroused from a larger market, with increased integration as a very important bonus effect.  The project aims to give young people increased influence and a possibility to contribute to the development of the society they long for at home too. The regions must also attract tourists, on a large scale and on the year around, and investors. The strategy and practical work of marketing the region must be completed in transnational cooperation expanded to a geographically more linked area.

Central objectives:

To project aims to stop or diminish the out migration of the rural South Baltic regions involved and become an interesting region up to date with the development that makes young inhabitants stay in, and move to, the region instead. To be able to obtain this, the project must succeed in its object to increase the influence on general development of the young population. Besides, the small and medium sized enterprises of tourism, transport, food and culture must be helped to find and develop new markets. Therefore one of the main objectives is to establish platforms where these SME:s could meet and find new partners with whom they could develop successful business ideas. The project must also develop a marketing strategy, to use for the purpose to attract new investors. The project partners aim to strengthen regional bonds and create a viable modern economy centred on culture and tourism.

Besides contributing to the economic growth, the goal of the transnational cultural co-operation is also to affect the European integration on a public level. The enlarged integration is a very important goal in itself, and also contributing to the realisation of another goal – more interregional travelling. The project also sees a big potential to be an example for other small macro regions with similar weaknesses and strengths. The project aim to spread the knowledge of Four Corners as a method of transnational cooperation and regional development to two euro regions in the candidate countries of the European Union.

Expected outcome:

The project will include overall planning of social, economical and environmental development in the transnational cooperation. The political planning will be more effective through the establishment and work of a network of spatial planning. The project will spread its benefits to neighbour areas and include these in the cooperation. This will also make the area more interesting from a tourist point of view. Accordingly an enlarged area will widely ameliorate the possibility of SMEs to get a profitable business and a higher economic growth. The interregional travelling will augment thanks to the improved accessibility and the increased knowledge and interest of the neighbour regions resulting from the transnational cultural cooperation. The young recommendations to the political strategic level will affect the development and make more young people stay in the region. Young people will learn more about their neighbouring countries, about the European community and European languages thanks to the school network. The increased knowledge of the young people will, together with the increased transnational cooperation of cultural enterprises, improve the integration.

The knowledge of the cooperation will be distributed to new transnational assemblies in the EU candidate countries, Kaliningrad and Belarus for affecting the ability of European co-operation in a broad field of action of the involved regions.