Funding programme

The Interreg Northern Periphery and Arctic (NPA) Programme provides funding for regions to work together with a focus on promoting sustainable development in remote and sparsely populated communities.

The programme’s vision is a Northern Periphery and Arctic area where communities cooperate with each other to harness opportunities, find common solutions to shared challenges and together become more prosperous and resilient.

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Call overview

This call funds projects that address innovation capacity, climate change and resource sufficiency, or cooperation opportunities.

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Priorities and themes

This call welcomes proposals under the following priorities:

• Priority 1: Strengthening innovation capacity for resilient and attractive NPA
• Priority 2: Strengthening capacity for climate change adaptation and resource sufficiency in NPA communities
• Priority 3: Strengthening organisational capacity among NPA communities to make use of cooperation opportunities.

In this call, the Monitoring Committee especially encourages applications from projects addressing the following topics:

• Climate change adaptation and risk management
• Nature and biodiversity protection
• Energy transition, renewable energy, and efficiency solutions suitable for cold climates and remote communities

‍Find more important details in the Terms of Reference.

Read the Interreg NPA Programme Manual.

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Eligibility

Main projects and capacity building small-scale projects in Priority 3 must involve partners from at least 3 programme partner countries, at least one of which is from an EU Member State.

Partnerships are recommended to include at least 2 of the 3 geographical zones of the programme area: Finland-Sweden-Norway; Ireland; Faroe Islands-Greenland-Iceland.

Lead Partners have to meet the following criteria:

• They are a public sector organisation.
• They are based in the NPA Programme area, unless they have a national remit that covers the Programme area.

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Project Duration

Main project: 30 months for project activities, excluding final reporting.

Capacity building projects: 18 months for project activities, excluding final reporting.

Please note that, for this call, Main projects must have a 30-month duration and €1,250,000 average budget. Small-scale projects in Priority 3 follow the usual 18-months duration and €200.000 total budget.

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Budget

A Main project is expected to have an average total budget of 1.250.000 EUR. Exceeding this amount should be well justified and proportional.

Capacity building small-scale projects applying under Priority 3 have a total budget of no more than 200.000 EUR. The support to the beneficiaries will be handled as a lump sum based on a draft budget established on a case-by-case basis and agreed ex ante by the Managing Authority.

Match-funding contributions: In general, partners contribute 35% (or 50% for Norwegian partners) of their project budget with own costs such as salary of staff. Partner organisations can also use external contributions to fund their participation.