The flagship projects are those projects financed through the Interreg Programs and the ENI and IPA II 2014-2020 instruments with Italian participation, which have left a significant imprint for the results achieved and the implementation of effective, measurable and lasting changes in the territories involved. A first survey of the flagship projects was launched in 2021. The initiative was promoted by the Agency for Territorial Cohesion (ACT), in agreement with the Department for Cohesion Policies of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers (DPCoe). The need to collect flagship projects arises from the desire to structure and strengthen Interreg’s contribution to territorial development policies and from the difficulty met in finding ex post information on the results of the projects at the end of the planned interventions.

The objective of the data form is to highlight the best results and outputs that emerged in the 2014-2020 programming cycle, based on three main criteria: relevance, transferability and sustainability. The knowledge of the results achieved by the flagship projects will feed a series of mainstreaming and capitalization activities at national level.

ACT has indeed shared and published at the beginning of 2022 a National Capitalization Plan[1] which has the task of developing, over the next two years, a series of lines of activities aimed at promoting the dissemination and above all the reuse of the results of the Interreg 2014-2020 projects. Furthermore, in the coming months, the DPCoe will coordinate the “Synergies” Project, funded under Line 5 of the 2014-2020 PAC CTE, which aims to develop synergic processes of integration between Interreg programming and mainstream programming, also to support implementation of macro-regional and sea basin strategies.

In 2021, the format of the form for the recognition of the flagship projects was developed and shared among the administrations involved, and published in April 2021 on the ACT website, on the flagship projects’ page[2]. The activity was set up as an open reporting form always active. In the following months, the Italian MAs, the National Contact Points, or the Secretariats have returned the completed forms. At the end of the year, an initial analysis of the transmitted forms was launched, which led to the publication of a first report referring to the first 80 projects reported. In-depth interviews were also carried out – for some indicated projects – with the Italian Lead partners and/or Partners of the projects, in order to confirm, integrate and update the contents of the forms.

In 2022 we intend to promote a new survey, always addressed to the MAs/Secretariats of the Interreg 2014-2020 Programs with Italian Mas, or at the National Contact Points of the Interreg 2014-2020 Programs with foreign MAs, to take into account further projects financed and/or concluded. For this second recognition, the flagship projects data form was revised, in order to facilitate the understanding of the information requested, simplify the compilation as well as integrate some fields referring to new information and analysis needs.

The new form was also discussed during the first meeting of the Interreg Capitalisers’ Community of Practice, which took place on June 27th, 2022.