Atlantic Cities attended the EU Macro-regional & Sea Basin Strategies on 8 and 9 July in Brussels. Organised by the European Commission since 2024, the event brings together the eight EU Strategies (Alpine, Danube, Adriatic-Ionian, Baltic Sea, Atlantic, Western Mediterranean, Black Sea and Greater North Sea) for two days of discussion and exchange.
Macro-regional and Sea Basin Strategies provide a flexible, multi-sectoral framework that strengthens coordination across thematic areas, borders and levels of governance.
There were two key moments for the Atlantic:
🔹The high-level panel, «Towards an Atlantic Maritime and Macro-regional Strategy», where representatives from DG REGIO, DG MARE and the Member States (France, Spain and Portugal) shared their perspectives on the future Strategy, which is expected to build on and take into account the existing Atlantic Maritime Strategy.
🔹The workshop, «Dialogue with regional and local authorities and socio-economic stakeholders on the future of the Atlantic Maritime and Macro-regional Strategy», which explored four thematic areas not covered by the current Strategy: talent attraction, innovation, interconnectivity and the energy sector.
As stated in our 2026 Declaration, Atlantic Cities welcomes the process towards the establishment of the Atlantic Macro-Region by June 2027, following the European Council’s decision of 18 December 2025. Atlantic local authorities recognise the achievements of Atlantic Arc cooperation—the importance of the Atlantic Maritime Strategy and the Interreg Atlantic Area Programme—while recognising that the scale of today’s challenges calls for a more comprehensive vision of Atlantic territorial development: a Macro-regional Strategy that combines maritime priorities with land-based issues, and in which cities play a central role.
We thank the organisers and the Atlantic Arc Commission for providing a valuable space to discuss these important issues and look forward to following the next steps towards the establishment of an Atlantic Maritime and Macro-regional Strategy.
#strategies4cooperation #AtlanticArc #AtlanticMacroRegion
