Interreg MED is a transnational cooperation Programme covering socio-economic, environmental, territorial and governance issues which affects very diverse geographically and socio-economically regions in the Mediterranean, Ionian and Adriatic seas.
 
Despite their differences, these regions share some common environmental, coastal, and maritime issues including continuing degradation of ecosystems, pressure from tourism and transport systems (shipping), overfishing, coastal erosion, water overconsumption, pollution from urban areas, waste management as well as climate change and mitigation and loss of biodiversity.
 
The Strategic Environment Assessment supports the drafting of the programme, providing the MA with strategic alternatives, examples of sustainable actions and selection criteria, as well as a list of mitigation actions and indicators helping to follow-up on the interventions.
 
As required in the Terms of Reference and in line with EU guidance, the Programme SEA covers:

• a scoping meeting, reviewing the methodology prior to full assessment of the cooperation Programme

• an environmental report, which includes a description of the Programme and its objectives, an analysis of coherence with other Programmes and UNSDGs; a description of the state of the environment and trends, the identification of areas likely to be significantly affected, the environmental effects of the Programme, the mitigation measures to reduce potential negative impacts and a proposal for an indicator monitoring system
•  consultations with the environmental authorities of each Member State participating in the Programme and the public, 
• a final document explaining how the environmental assessment and the consultations have been taken into account in the final draft of the INTERREG Euro-Med 2021-2027 Programme.