Nordic-Scottish Partnership

HIE has been at the forefront of developing links with Nordic countries since 1994.  It has been long recognised that our area shares common issues with the northern areas of Scandinavia, namely peripherality, sparsity of population, culture and social issues.  Early collaborative work focussed on the development of active networks for SMEs, forestry, ICT and universities.

An example of the SME networking managed by the International affairs team was the running of a series of international business forum events with companies from the Highlands & Islands, North Finland, Sweden, Norway and Iceland.  All the collaborative work led to the development of a pilot European programme to help fund projects which resulted from these networks - the Northern Periphery Programme, which ran initially from 1997-1999.

Northern Periphery is now an established inter-regional programme which also incorporates the Faeroe Islands and Greenland in its eligible area, and from 2007 onwards will involve Northern Ireland and Eire.

Further collaborative work between regional development agencies and local authorities is also possible through the ongoing network of Nordic and Scottish partners which meets periodically and have developed an action plan for future work.

For more information contact the International affairs team.