Regional Initiative of Port Development in Adriatic-Ionian Region – POWER Plus Project

The challenges of an intensive development of information-communications technologies, insufficient investments and the inability to use the full potential of the full infrastructure, have led to the fact that the ports of the Adriatic-Ionian Region are neglected, losing their historic role as the principal centers of commercial and cultural exchange and development.

The driving engine of their renewal in 2020 was the transnational project for the Adriatic-Ionian Region called POWER (Ports as Driving Wheels of Entrepreneurial Realm), a project whose aim was to provide support to ports in the process of turning them into innovative hubs that would be able to reinterpret and renew their historic role as places of exchange, in order to become connecting points between various Adriatic territorial contexts to the end of improving their entrepreneurial potentials which had not been used or were not valued enough.

Through this evolution of Adriatic ports into innovation hubs, POWER has reversed the trend which is largely characterized by structural weakness (in the sense of representation, modernization, development, social-economic positioning and regeneration process).

Two years after the POWER projects were launched, more precisely, in January this year, the EU financed the final phase of the project – the six-month project POWER Plus, to the end of detecting the main problems that could have impact on the ports in the Adriatic-Ionian Region in the short or medium term in the light of the coronavirus pandemic outbreak and the economic crisis which had more or less had an impact of the activities of the ports which had taken part in the project.

The project consists of three phases: the first phase entails interviewing experts about potential future scenarios regarding the port areas involved in the project, also taking into account the wider context and trends in the Adriatic-Ionian Region; the second phase of the project entails a workshop which aims to deepen the scenarios presented in Phase 1 and determining the weaknesses and the positive aspects of the strategy and the methodology of the POWER project, whereas the results of these efforts will serve for the preparation of the Methodology and Strategy Annex, which will be published within the third, final phase, through four events “Predicting Territorial Cooperation”.

Recently, the first of the four in the range of events where the results of the project will be presented was completed. The project partners will promote these results in Ravenna, Tirana, Sarajevo and Igoumenitsa.

Ravenna

Tirana

Igumenitsa

ports of the Adriatic Ionian Region

port infrastructure

POWER project

POWER Plus

Ports as Driving Wheels of Entrepreneurial Realm

innovative hubs

Adriatic powers

Predicting Territorial Cooperation

Power projects Methodology and Strategy Annex