Breakout Sessions

The session connects results from Interreg BSR projects on crisis preparedness, maritime safety and climate resilience, showing how transnational cooperation delivers practical responses to shared security and environmental challenges. Working with EUSBSR Policy Area Coordinators, participants use real project results to design one concrete action beyond the project context and identify key gaps and threats, feeding into future cooperation and the implementation of the updated EUSBSR Action Plan.

Who cares for our carers when their resilience is tested? Health and social care services are the backbone of societal resilience, yet their ability to function depends on skilled and committed individuals. This session explores how innovative initiatives and workplace strategies can support those on the front lines. Join us to discover practical ways to sustain work ability, foster recovery, and secure a resilient workforce capable of navigating in an increasingly volatile world.

Intended to be fun and interactive, this roleplay workshop introduces participants to mission-orientated innovation policy. Participants will be tasked with a mission to address a wicked problem. Each will each play the role of a key stakeholder. Working together, they will develop a vision of what the world would look like if their mission was achieved, set milestones to test progress and possibly devise a strategy to ensure key partners pull their weight.

EU external border regions face growing geopolitical volatility and hybrid threats. Resilience cannot rely on hard security alone; it also depends on people‑centred cooperation: cohesive communities, shared solutions, and inclusive services that safeguard everyday life. In this session, a live disinformation scenario triggers rapid, community‑level responses to identify existing tools, expose gaps, and forge cross‑border cooperation that contains harm and rebuilds trust.

This 90-minute scenario-building workshop brings together actors with diverse expertise to share their ‘stories and visions’ for building a ‘total resilience’, BSR response. By connecting industrial, policy, citizen, investment and political testimonials, we will shine a light on the multi-faceted nature of resilience. Through active audience engagement, we will co-create the conditions, challenges and benefits that come with a resilience ‘mindset’, fit for the BSR in a security and defence era.

The Baltic Sea Region faces growing and interconnected risks and climate change raises the risk of cascading crises when societies can least afford them. Especially on local levels. In this workshop participants will face these challenges themselves as they step into the shoes of important local actors in a hands-on interactive flood simulation build on real-life data. During this exercise we will show how local leadership and collective action can turn risks into resilience.

How can the Baltic Sea Region become more resilient by designing societies around older people? This interactive workshop invites participants to co-create elderly-centred future scenarios for 2040, linking SmartAging with climate resilience, digital trust and sustainable living. Using a Fishbone method, participants identify risks, opportunities and joint EU-level responses that strengthen resilience across the region.

In the ever-changing security landscape, new threats are appearing, and old threats appear in updated versions. The accident risks are increasing and the environmental consequences are greatest at sea, making effective risk assessment and the adjustment of response preparedness crucial.

The session explores how maritime and transport risk management must adapt to the new reality, and presents emerging risk patterns, measures already in use, and how the approaches can be scaled in the BSR.

Communities’ ability to act together has been central to Ukraine’s resilience and offers critical lessons for the BSR. Join Ukrainian stakeholders and BSR practitioners to explore lessons identified and engage in shaping how future cooperation with Ukraine can be more effective and value-creating. Combining first-hand insights, funding opportunities and interactive discussion, you will help shape a practical roadmap for meaningful engagement with Ukrainian stakeholders in future projects.

The session will examine how the Baltic Sea Region can strengthen the resilience and protection of critical energy infrastructure in the face of hybrid and geopolitical threats. Through an interactive breakout format, participants will discuss emerging risks, share practical experiences, and explore regional cooperation approaches under PA Energy to enhance energy security, crisis preparedness, and coordinated responses within the EUSBSR framework.

Dive beneath the Baltic Sea’s surface to uncover the hidden dangers/treasures of sunken munitions and wrecks. This interactive, cross‑sector session blends expert insights, new technologies, and immersive multimedia to explore solutions for a safer, cleaner sea. Join the debate, shape action, and help protect one of Europe’s most vulnerable marine environments.

This sessions will focus on the needs of different maritime sectors and interests to maritime spatial planning (MSP), from environmental, socio-economic and cultural perspectives. The cross-cutting issue is how to ensure resilience in MSP across the Baltic Sea region. The output will feed into the development of the regional strategic environmental assessment (SEA) framework being developed under the Interreg-BSR SEABAS platform project.

How does culture contribute to resilience and security? This session explores recent research on culture as infrastructure for resilience, drawing on a comparative NATO Eastern Flank study and findings from the BSR Cultural Pearls project. Speakers discuss how culture contributes to resilience and security-building under hybrid pressure, followed by interactive audience dialogue on next steps for the BSR.

Smart specialisation strategies (S3) would greatly benefit from embracing the Creative Economy (CE). Retaining young talents, creating new jobs, fostering thriving start-ups, participatory communities, attractive education centres – how can public authorities activate change and success? In our workshop, we place the focus on how public authorities can help activate the industries’ potential for their region and drive innovation in the framework of the quadruple helix?

Is a Nordic-Baltic common policy approach to food system resilience possible? RegioFoodS (FutureFoodS Partnerhsip) project organises this Session to set up the scene and dynamically discuss long–term regional food systems resilience and preparedness in the Nordics and Baltics. Recognizing the siloed sectoral approach to food policies, in our session 4 experts from academia and policy sector will constructively interact, also with the audience, in a debate presenting different viewpoints.

This interactive session explores spatial resilience as a strategic response to overlapping crises in the Baltic Sea Region. Building on the VASAB Ministerial Tallinn Declaration on Spatial Resilience and VASAB Polish Chairmanship priorities, it translates policy goals into territorial insights and highlights governance gaps. After a keynote by Tiit Oidjärv, participants join a World Café to discuss four dimensions of resilience and how they can be measured and applied in practice.

Cities across the Baltic Sea Region have developed SUMPs and integrated TEN-T objectives, yet implementation often stalls. This session offers a reality check from BSR urban nodes, drawing on survey insights across different governance contexts. It examines political and governance conditions shaping implementation and identifies challenges requiring cross-sectoral and multi-level cooperation, delivering policy-relevant messages for the BSR Urban Mobility Policy Framework and EUSBSR Action Plan.

How can the Baltic Sea Region move from consuming AI to building its own trusted solutions? This interactive session brings together science, startups, and public authorities to explore “Local Value” in AI: from public procurement and open innovation to regional AI sandboxes. Through a co-creation format, participants will shape practical tools for digital sovereignty, resilience, and cross-border AI cooperation in the BSR.

Session title “Mind the Gap” expresses the key challenge; there’s often a gap between the local and regional level and EU level that must be minded and filled. Cross-border cooperation platforms are silo-breakers and intermediaters that can do and are already doing this job. However, there are also prejudices, doubts and challenges on the way, but the cross-border co-operation jointly with the EU Strategy for the BSR can make the macro-region more unified, sustainable and resilient.