LEAD PARTNER
Municipality of ‘s-Hertogenbosch (NL)

PARTNERS
Province of Noord-Brabant (NL)
ProAgria Pohjois-Savo (FI)
PRODECA Catalan Export Agency (ES)
Northern and Western Regional Assembly (IE)
Development Agency of South Aegean Region –READ S.A. (EL)
Sibiu County Council (RO)
Hajdú-Bihar County Government (HU)
International Institute of Gastronomy, Culture, Arts and Tourism (IGCAT) (ES)

PROJECT SUMMARY
Gastronomy, local and regional food heritage is a common European cultural heritage and as such also a major economic asset. Regional agro-food value chains can have a serious positive impact on local development. They also generate cooperation between various sectors including agriculture, tourism, hospitality, education, etc. One way of materializing such cooperation is the growing trend of food-related tourism.

Uniqueness versus standardization
Nowadays almost half of the travelers wish to have culinary experiences during their travels. Yet European regions of gastronomy are facing serious difficulties like losing their gastronomic uniqueness due to globalization threatening standardized, mass-produced food or underestimation of gastronomy as a cultural heritage that needs to be protected.

PROJECT’S OBJECTIVES
Main objective EUREGA
EUREGA’s main objective is to have food, food habits and gastronomy included and recognized in EU, regional and national strategies and policies. These should be seen both as a cultural asset and strong element in regional cultural identity and as a necessary tool to boost sustainable products and services. This should lead to creating stronger and more resilient regions by protecting and stimulating gastronomy as part of their cultural heritage and also by identifying new opportunities for economic development.

EUREGA’s main objective is thus to have food, food habits and gastronomy included and recognized in EU regional and national strategies and policies both as a cultural asset and strong element in regional cultural identity and as a necessary tool to boost sustainable products and services. This should lead to creating stronger and more resilient regions by: 1) protecting and stimulating gastronomy as part of their cultural heritage 2) identifying new opportunities for economic development.

Sub-objectives EUREGA
Partners share common topics of interest, explored during the project development phase, which can be considered as the shared ambitions to be achieved by them. These thus form the basis for the project sub-objectives, all aiming to improve concrete policy instruments related to the regional level to resolve the bottlenecks caused by the underestimation of gastronomy as cultural heritage and as an outcome the underrepresentation of such gastronomic cultural heritage in local/regional/national policies. EUREGA wishes to focus on the following sub-themes of Gastronomy and

• Support for SMEs (including SMEs in strengthening and developing
  short regional food supply chains)
• Education (increasing the representation of gastronomy and creativity
  in educational programmes)
• Sustainable tourism (improving policies to meet sustainable tourism
  objectives)
• Linking urban and rural (linking urban and rural development
  strategies as relates to gastronomy)
• Health (exploiting cultural heritage in relation to well-being, education,
  tourism and hospitality)

EUREGA programme is part financed by the European Regional Development Fund.

EUREGA official website: https://www.interregeurope.eu/eurega/