«Cross-border cooperation extremely important for Russia»

«In the current situation, cross-border cooperation is extremely important for our country, because it is a format for depoliticized interaction with the European countries […]», Subbotin said in a meeting in Murmansk this week, regional broadcaster GTMR Murman reports.

«We have excellent relationships on the level of regions, and we believe that we can transfer this experience to inter-state relations», the ministry representative added.

In the period 2007-2013, the ENPI Kolarctic programme supported a total of 51 project with more than €28 million. Entities from Murmansk were part of 47 of them and five projects were operated by Russian regional stakeholders. The projects covered a wide range of priorities, from road construction to media and youth, a new project catalogue shows.

«We are trying to promote projects which leave a footprint in the region», Murmansk First Deputy Governor Aleksey Tyukavin said in the event. «Among them are construction of roads leading to the border and projects on reconstruction and modernization of border crossing points», he added. 

As part of the programme, the Russian Agency for the Development of the State Border (Rosgranitsa) got a major grant for the upgrade of the Borisoglebsk border crossing point on the border to Norway. However, for unknown reasons, that project never materialized.

In the new ENI Kolarctic programme for the period 2014-2020, infrastructure development remains a top priority. The programme document includes eight major infrastructure projects of which four are road projects and two border infrastructure projects. 

Among the projects is also one on wind power development in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug.

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