EUSAIR A Journey Towards a Stronger Adriatic and Ionian Region

In 2014, a commitment was made to promote Blue Growth, enhance connections and link the region to the rest of the transport and energy networks, protect environmental quality, and set the tourism sector on a sustainable path together – EUSAIR with its four Thematic Pillars was adopted.

Starting with eight participating countries, EUSAIR is the fastest-growing macroregional strategy; North Macedonia joined in 2020, and San Marino followed in 2022. This reflects the attractiveness, fitness, delivery mechanisms, and performance of the Strategy. The role of EUSAIR is also strongly committed in supporting the EU enlargement policy in the Western Balkans, predominantly in policy alignment and institutional capacity.

As the socio-economic landscape of Europe has changed significantly since then, EUSAIR's Pillars were updated to address the newly emerging challenges. Today, 10 EUSAIR participating countries are working together in five thematic Pillars: Pillar 1 Blue Sustainable Economy, Pillar 2 Connecting the Region, Pillar 3 Environmental Quality, Pillar 4 Sustainable Tourism and Pillar 5 Improved Social Cohesion.

For this anniversary occasion, a video was also created about the 10 years of joint EUSAIR journey towards a stronger region Adriatic-Ionian Region and had its premiere on the first day of the Forum.