On 24 June 2026, our team travelled to Rimini to attend the IPA ADRION Capitalisation Event, held at the Hotel Continental. The full-day event brought together 66 projects grouped into 10 thematic clusters, with the shared goal of transforming EU-funded project results into concrete policy impact and informing priorities for the next Interreg programming period.
The morning opened with welcome remarks from Lodovico Gherardi of the IPA ADRION Managing Authority, followed by two plenary roundtables. The first explored how programmes can contribute to a more cohesive Adriatic-Ionian region, examining the strategic value of capitalisation and the role of cooperation programmes in ensuring that knowledge, practices and solutions developed by projects remain relevant beyond their implementation phase. The second roundtable looked ahead, focusing on how the results and good practices generated under the current period can shape the design of future Interreg programmes. Both sessions featured contributions from the European Commission DG REGIO, the EUSAIR Strategy, the IPA ADRION Monitoring Committee, the Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions, and regional and national representatives.
A session on capitalisation in practice followed, with presentations from the IPA ADRION Joint Secretariat, the INTERACT Programme, and Interreg Italy-Croatia, each illustrating different approaches to maximising the uptake and long-term value of project results, including through the Mediterranean Multi-Programme Mechanism (MMM).
The afternoon was dedicated to the 10 thematic cluster breakout sessions, where projects gathered to map common ground, identify shared outputs, and begin planning joint activities. Each IPA ADRION project can allocate up to €10,000 from its existing Interreg budget toward a joint cluster activity, to be implemented by August 2027. Possible formats include joint conferences or workshops, policy papers and briefs targeting decision-makers, and dissemination campaigns to increase public awareness of project solutions. The day closed with key messages delivered by the spokesperson of each cluster.
VLPF participated as part of JOINABLE, together with the University of Montenegro and the Municipality of Punat. JOINABLE is a project working to establish and promote blue circular economy approaches to address the challenge of marine and freshwater litter across the Adriatic-Ionian area, spanning Italy, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Albania, and Greece. The project develops comprehensive and scalable solutions, fosters joint collaboration and innovation uptake, implements innovative models and tools, and promotes transnational networks to tackle plastic pollution at a regional scale.
At the event, JOINABLE joined six other projects in Cluster 8, dedicated to water pollution in marine and river environments. The cluster brings together projects addressing plastic pollution, marine litter, marine pollution spills, and blue circular economy approaches including plastic waste reuse and marine litter recycling. During the breakout sessions, the seven projects began mapping their common thematic areas, identifying complementary solutions and methodologies, and discussing the type of joint activities each could contribute to, from awareness-raising initiatives to policy-oriented outputs, laying the groundwork for coordinated action ahead of the August 2027 deadline.
