Cultural activities count for about 2.8 % of overall Structural Funds expenditure, whereas mainly in small EU-countries the relevance of culture-related INTERREG-Projects is very high.

The actual situation shows that many cross-border and interregional Cultural Structural Funds Projects are neither planned in a cross-border nor in an interregional framework. Therefore it is often very difficult to build-up co-operation projects which have an equivalent financial and personal basis on both sides of the border or in the different regions involved.

Especially what concerns co-operation projects between new and old EU Member States additional problems have to be taken into account, like the huge differences in regional price levels. The Third Country co-operations claim often problems with harmonizing different financial instruments in cross-border and interregional projects.