Problems addressed• Scarse coordination and programming of transnational and cross-border partnerships of EU regions with partners in the South Mediterranean shore and South-East Europe (neighbouring partners) and with external EU policies (MEDA, CARDS and future Neighbourhood instrument) Objectives• Identification of procedures to enhance the Regions’ role in the Interreg strategic programming (that is, participation in the elaboration of Interreg Complements);• Identification of coordination measures within Interreg and wth MEDA and CARDS programmes as well as with the incoming Neighbourhood Programme• Development of the partnership concept, taking into account the diverse vertical and horizontal subsidiarity structures in South Mediterranean and South-East Europe CountriesApproach and methodology• Development of the parntership concept (Regions’ role in multilevel/multilayer programming and coordination), considering both the EU policies (internal social cohesion and external policies – MEDA, CARDS and Neighbourhood Programmes) and Third Countries institutional contexts (vertical and horizontal subsidiarity ptinciple application). This will be realized through a policy and institional stakeholder analysis.• Identification, analysis and transfer of good practices on programming and coordination in Interreg programme, strand A and B. The analysis will be carried out through the creation of a benchmark instrument, that will be applied on the selecter Interreg projects. The benchmarking instrument can be very useful for the INTERACT programme: it could be replicated on a broader scale to compare Interreg practices on partnership. In this sense the COMPART project will involve theInteract point tool box.in the elaboration of the benchmarking instrument. Expected Results: • 8 trans-national meetings• COMPART Internet Web• Benchmarking instrument on partnership