ABSTRACT
The territorial policies of the European Union envisage a growing cooperation at the regional and interregional levels to promote more social and economic cohesion. Europe 2000 clearly intends to overcome the obstacles that prevent further integration of border regions. Since the 1980s several horizontal measures were developed by the Commission to support the overall vertical measures implemented by the Common Support Frameworks and Single-Programming Frameworks. One of these has been the Interreg project, which started in 1989 and is already in its third program. The Interreg is integrated in an overall strategy of the European Union to foster transborder cooperation and mobility. The Interreg of Spain and Portugal take a large part of the overall budget. In Interreg I the budget was 1,034 billion Ecu for 31 operational projects in the period between 1990 and 1993. Interreg II was supportive of internal and external cross-border cooperation as well as a number of cross-border activities concerning the establishment of energy networks.
