AFLE | POCTEFA

East Coastal Functional Area

🌊Building a sustainable Mediterranean coast

Program: Interreg POCTEFA

Objective: A Europe closer to its citizens (OP5)

Total budget: 5.5 million EUR

Duration: July 2022 to July 2029

Area Coordinator: The Pyrenees-Mediterranean Euroregion

Project website: afle.euroregio.eu

Social media AFLE: Instagram – Facebook – LinkedIn

The East Coastal Functional Area is dedicated to the challenges of ecosystems preservation and sustainable coastal management on the area between the Aude estuary and the Ebro delta. It is managed by the Pyrenees-Mediterranean Euroregion and a Steering Committee.

As part of the INTERREG VI-A Spain-France-Andorra (POCTEFA 2021-2027) Program  it is funded by the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

POCTEFA’s main objective is to strengthen the economic and social integration of the cross-border area through cooperation between territories. To achieve this, it co-finances and promotes cooperation projects carried out by partner entities from France, Spain, and Andorra in its territory.

The new POCTEFA program period (2021-2027) is based on the new political objective (OP5) of “a Europe closer to its citizens.”

To implement this political objective, the European Commission has proposed the identification of five functional areas within POCTEFA to provide greater territoriality and allow to work on a smaller scale to target more precisely local cooperation issues and encourage local initiatives. They are defined as areas with a high degree of interdependence facing common issues, where simultaneous actions in different sectors are needed for an efficient development. Each area is managed by a coordinator and a steering committee supervised by the Joint Secretariat of the POCTEFA program.

Each area manages a call for projects to select local cross-border cooperation initiatives that respond to its issues defined by axes. The AFLE’s call will provide 5.5 million euros in ERDF grants to projects for the preservation and sustainable management of the Mediterranean coastline.

The AFLE extends along the coastal strip between the Aude river  mouth and the Ebro delta.

Check on the strategy here ! (in French)

The AFLE focuses on preservation and sustainable management issues of the Mediterranean coastline as identified in its strategy.

The main priorities, organized into 4 structuring axes, aim to promote across the area joint initiatives of projects successfully addressing the challenges as defined in the strategy.

AFLE’s call for projects opened on April 4th 2024 with a launch event in Banyuls-sur-Mer. You can relive this event here: YouTube streaming link

It closed on July 5th 2024.

You can find all the information about the call for projects on the afle.euroregio.eu website, as well as on poctefa.eu

During this call, 10 projects has been submitted addressing all 4 axes and 9 are provisionally admitted: List of provisionally admitted projects