In the context of Interreg Europe, a good practice is defined as an initiative related to regional development policy which has proved to be successful in a region and which is of potential interest to other regions. ‘Proved successful’ is when the good practice has already provided tangible and measurable results in achieving a specific objective. Since Interreg Europe is dedicated to improving regional development policies, a good practice is usually related to public intervention. In principle, a private initiative is not considered as a good practice', unless if there is evidence that it has already inspired public policies. Although the Interreg Europe programme primarily refers to good practices, valuable learning also derives from unsuccessful practices. Lessons learnt from unsuccessful experiences can also be taken into consideration in the exchange of experience process. Examples of good practices can be found in the good practice database on the programme website.

1. You submit a good practice related to your Interreg Europe project. Your project web admin is notified and can request additional information, and approve or decline your good practice. If the project web admin approves your good practice, it is published on your project website. 2. If approved by the project web admin, the good practice will go to a dedicated Policy Officer that will evaluate it for the project indicator. The Policy officer can also request additional information, and approve or decline your good practice. 3. If approved by the Policy Officer, the good practice goes to the Thematic Experts of the Interreg Europe Policy Learning Platform. They will evaluate it based on relevance to other regions and replicability. The Thematic Expert can ask you for additional information, approve or decline the good practice. If approved, your good practice is published in the good practice's database. You can also submit a good practice if you are not part of an Interreg Europe project. Your good practice will then directly go to our Thematic Experts for validation. They will evaluate it based on relevance to other regions and replicability. The Thematic Expert can ask you for additional information, approve or decline the good practice. If approved, your good practice is published in the good practice's database.

The good practice validation involves different people, depending on whether you submit your good practices related to an Interreg Europe project or not. If you are submitting a good practice related to an Interreg Europe project, the following people are involved: 1. Community members: The author of the good practice 2. Web admin: The person(s) responsible for the first step of validation. 3. Policy Officers: The person responsible for validating the good practice for the project output indicator. 4. Thematic Experts: The persons responsible for validating the good practice for the good practice database. If you are submitting a good practice not related to an Interreg Europe project, the following people are involved: 1. Community members: The author of the good practice 2. Thematic Experts: The persons responsible for validating the good practice for the good practice database.

Yes, you can download the template for the good practice form.

A good practice should be linked to a project when it has been identified as part of the interregional learning process during an Interreg Europe project (i.e. to be reported under the indicator “number of good practices identified” in the progress report). If you are involved in more than one project, please choose the project for which you are submitting this good practice. If you are submitting a good practice that has not been identified during an Interreg Europe project’s exchange of experience process, answer 'NO' in the good practice submission form to the question ‘Are you involved in an Interreg Europe project?’.

All project partners with an Interreg Europe community account can submit a good practice for publication. Your project’s web administrator's role is to check the overall quality of the information on good practices and validate its link to the project. When an author submits a good practice linked to an Interreg Europe project, their project web administrators receives a notification email. After login to the web admin account and under the Good practices tab, you will find a list of good practices related to your project. Please note that this tab is on your personal dashboard, not on your project editing dashboard. Click on the title of the good practice with the status 'Waiting for approval'. Read the good practice description carefully and at the very end you will find three buttons: If you find the good practice complete and linked to your project and you want it to be published on your project website, click OK. It confirms both its quality and the link to the project. The good practice is then published on the project website under Good practices and sent for further validation to the Interreg Europe team. If further validated, the good practice will appear also in the programme Good practice database. The status of the good practice changes to 'Published on project website. Under validation.' If you find that the good practice does not come from your project, decline the good practice by clicking NO. If you see that the good practice is linked to your project, but some information is missing, you can send the good practice for further improvement to the author by clicking MAYBE.

The good practice you submit to the Interreg Europe website goes through a validation process. The good practice linked ot a project will be reviewed by the project web administrator that is appointed at the start of the project. If the project web administrator approves the good practice, it is published on your project website and will be sent to the Policy Officer of the Joint Secreatriat for further validation.

Good practices submitted in the knowledge hub are sent to the Joint Secretariat and to the thematic experts for validation.

The project monitoring system is based on a limited number of output and result indicators. Output indicators measure tangible deliverables which contribute to achieving the project’s objectives. They are directly related to the activities carried out in the project. Outputs are measured in physical units, such as the number of interregional events, good practices identified, or policies addressed. Results are the immediate effects of the project’s action and derive from the production of its outputs. They are what the project aims to change. Result indicators are also measured in physical units, such as the number of policy instruments improved or the number of organisations with increased capacity due to their participation in interregional cooperation.

The policy learning from the cooperation activities must be transformed into action and lead to concrete measures in the regions. In principle, a successful pilot action should also result in the improvement of a policy instrument. The improvements can be of 3 types: - a new type of project - an improved governance, i.e. a change in the management of the policy instrument - a structural change, i.e. revision of the policy instrument adressed.

Interreg Europe is dedicated to reinforcing ‘the effectiveness of cohesion policy’. It pursues the overall objective to improve the implementation of regional development policies, including Investment for jobs and growth goal programmes, by promoting the exchange of experiences, innovative approaches, and capacity building in relation to the identification, dissemination, and transfer of good practices among regional policy actors. Interreg Europe is therefore dedicated to cooperation among regional policy organisations from across Europe. By supporting learning and increasing the capacities of these organisations, the programme will strive to improve the design and delivery of regional development policies.

We expect that most regions will reach policy improvements during the core phase. For the rest of the regions, the action plans will be integrated directly in the relevant section of the last progress report of the core phase. We estimate that such a task should be easily performed using internal resources (staff costs). Therefore, we do not expect project partners to plan costs for the elaboration of the action plan at application stage.

Costs for project activities are eligible from the date of the monitoring committee’s approval of the project until the end date of the project. The end date of the project marks the end of the eligibility period for expenditure, and it is the date by which the last progress report must be submitted to the joint secretariat.

Under Interreg Europe programme rules, staff costs can only be reported according to the fixed percentage method. It is therefore not possible to use other methods such as the calculation of staff costs on an hourly basis with timesheets. The staff costs of employees working part-time on the project must be calculated on a real costs basis using a fixed percentage of the gross employment cost (incl. employer’s contributions) in accordance with article 55 (5) of Regulation (EU) No 2021/1060.