Huredepis is a project approved and funded under ARCHIMED Programme of the EU Community Initiative INTERREG III Strand B, on international cooperation at the subnational level, which specializes on interventions for the improvement of spatial planning integration in the South-eastern Mediterranean area.

The project has the ambition to identify the common problems of the examining regions related to the sustainable growth, to analyze the best approaches and to propose solutions to these problems, to provide specific suggestions and political actions for the involved regions and finally to initiate and establish a permanent dialogue among all interested regional authorities and other local actors and setting up two permanent networks to accomplish the objectives of the project, the Growth Network and the Immigration Network.

The consortium of the project is carefully selected to meet the special needs of the scope of the project. The partnership is consisted of Patras Science Park as the lead partner, Region of Western Greece, Region of Ionian Islands, Agriculture University of Athens, Science and Technology Park of Sicily, University of Lecce (Salento), Municipality of Tricase and Municipality of Sanarica.

Philosophy of the project

Huredepis favours a participatory approach to development, through its openness to all actors willing to contribute to the success of its aims.
Project’s philosophy is to look into the causes of inadequate planning efforts and then to explore opportunities, which are suitable to a significant number of local and regional actors, to propose solutions to pending problems and meet the needs for future development initiatives

The ultimate aim is for the network of actors to play a more active, long-term, facilitating role for local and regional development efforts, based on knowledge sharing and information exchange.

Objectives

The project’s main objective is to promote an integrated approach to planning and managing regional capabilities by:

• evaluating the existing regional capabilities and
• identifying the common problems for the interregional area related to sustainable growth,
• coordinating planning efforts and
• analyzing best approaches and practices     

The project intends to support policy formation through networking actions on six main sectors and on one great modern challenge for the regions:

Actions

Six Sectors

HuReDePis project had a two step approach, first of all to describe the existing regional situation, to understand the strong and weak regional potentional and then to suggest actions and growth policies. Thus, firstly the excisting growth situation and regional opportunities where examined in order to understand for the corresponding regions and outline the potential growth.

There are six thematic areas of focus, as important economic sectors and policy fields:

For every sector a trans-regional Operational Committee consisting of 6-8 experts, will be formed with the main task to manage specific development-oriented actions mainly through the assessment and proposal of new strategies and approaches for regional growth.

Operational Committees will perform studies, organize meetings, workshops and events and prepare their own deliverables.

Each Operational Committee will also perform a Pilot project to test and prove the implementation of its directions and suggestions.

The sectors will be viewed under the light of the realized changes in the regional labour markets and the structural role of immigration, as well as the increasing importance of knowledge, innovation and research for the areas covered.

A policy issue: Immigration

This project will examine migratory phenomenon on the areas concerned and on the local labour markets, what is migrants’ impact on receiving local economies, how migrants can be utilized to contribute to the development. But development and sustainable growth cannot only be based on human but on research and innovation. Science, technology and innovation are generally recognized as important determinants of economy well being. Public support for R&D is therefore expected to have downstream impacts in terms of indicators such as competitiveness, economic growth and employment. Thus, WP3 aims supporting take up of innovative technologies and methods, supporting services for trans-national knowledge and technology transfer and exploring new types of innovation methods and services fostering technology and knowledge through data archiving and transfer. The instruments to achieve these are the pilot projects that are going to serve as test cases and paradigms of successful utilisation of innovation. For agriculture sector is foreseen a pilot project for biological production methods, confrontation of crop enemies for concrete common cultivations, e.g. vines. Tourism, pilot project will anticipate the creation of thematic tourist routes from Sicily, to Puglia, to Ionian Islands, Epirus and Western Greece, targeting to the development of new tourist products. For SME`s the anticipation of new technology will be investigated. For culture is anticipated the specification of cultural heritage and artistic elements (feasts, customs, elements of popular tradition, monuments, elements of music and hymnology, etc), the common characteristics election under the new technologies application and the mapping out of common cultural routes targeting at the tourist exploitation of these regions. The environmental pilot project will concern protected regions (NATURA 2000 territories) and how new technologies and innovative tools ensure environmental protection. For services will be examined the possibility of a start-up company, for maritime services in Mediterranean area. 

Outcomes and Beneficiaries

The products of this cooperation will include studies, white papers, handbooks, diagnostic and qualitative empirical studies, survey papers and development of indicators for the analysis of immigration.

Direct beneficiaries will be the regional authorities and local communities, the immigrants and the labour markets as well as the academic and scientific communities.