Exchange of experiences between the Slovakia-Hungary and Poland-Slovakia Interreg programmes

The Joint Secretariat of the Interreg Slovakia-Hungary Programme hosted the colleagues of the Interreg Poland-Slovakia Programme for an exchange of experiences. 

The Interreg Slovakia-Hungary Cooperation Programme involved Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) as Beneficiaries into the implementation of cross-border projects in the previous programming period (2014-2020). Thus we gathered quite some amount of experiences about working with SMEs. The colleagues of the Joint Secretariat know what regulations to consider during contracting. They are aware of those questions that might arise due to the cross-border aspect of the projects. They also understand the most common problems the enterprise and the Programme can face. The colleagues of the First Level Control department have practical experiences about the reporting and financial issues. 

The Interreg V-A Poland-Slovakia Programme visited us for this knowledge. One representative of the Managing Authority, Mr. Peter Balun and 3 colleagues from their JS (Martina Bakoňová, Pavel Škulavík, Grzegorz Łabuz) arrived to Budapest on 23/18/2022 to get to know as much as possible about our practice with SMEs within a 2 days’ workshop. 

The colleagues of the JS summarized the most important information about the whole process, from the preparation of the call for proposals through the assessment until the closing of projects. They demonstrated some of those projects that served with a lot of experiences. Finally the first level controllers shared their thoughts on the most common mistakes and best practices related to reporting. 

A lot of questions were raised during the workshop, and our colleagues did their best to answer those so the Interreg V-A Poland-Slovakia Programme can start cooperating with SMEs with as much knowledge as possible.