Six local authorities bordering the Strait of Dover and the North Sea have decided to turn their bilateral relations into a multilateral area for dialogue in order to encourage the emergence of cross-border projects across the territory of the Strait.
The INTERACT programme offers training courses to players involved in the management of and decision-making for Interreg programmes. Jean Peyrony, the MOT’s Director-General, contributed to a training session devoted to the relevance and concepts of territoriality and functional areas in the upcoming 2021-2027 programming period, in which political objective 5 aims to give greater prominence to territorial strategies and action by local players.
The European Committee of the Regions, the European Commission (DG REGIO), the MOT, the Association of European Border Regions (AEBR) and the Central European Service for Cross-Border Initiatives (CESCI) are working together to give a voice to local and regional players in border territories in the context of the Covid-19 health crisis. You can now share your border region and cross-border experiences on the platform created by the Committee of the Regions.
The European Commission, in cooperation with the President of the European Council, has put forward a European roadmap towards lifting coronavirus containment measures.
The Covid-19 crisis demands that European and cross-border cooperation be strengthened. The 2021-2027 programmes, the preparation of which is continuing, should be informed by the lessons learned from it. The draft regulations proposed by the Commission, which are in the process of being negotiated with the Parliament and the Council, contain positive innovations for cross-border territories that address their aspirations, as expressed in the Cross-Border Cooperation Strategies along France’s borders. The MOT encourages all of the stakeholders to take them on board.
On 15 December 2018, the Basque Country Community approved a “cross-border cooperation” competence. Drawing on the Cross-Border Cooperation Strategy approach, it embarked on a consultative process to draw up its cross-border cooperation strategy up to 2030. The objective was to codesign cross-border public policy and to be aligned with the framework of the forthcoming 2021-2027 European programming period.
The Nice Côte d’Azur Metropolis is a unique cross-border territory, located between the sea and the mountains and adjacent to two borders: an internal EU border over 100 km long with the Piedmont Region in Italy and an international border with the Principality of Monaco. Its 2020-2030 Cross-Border Cooperation Strategy, adopted on 16 December 2019, is organised into four complementary levels of work.
The territory of the Strasbourg Eurometropolis has an abundance of players and initiatives in the area of cross-border cooperation, for the most part designed and implemented with its German partners in Kehl and Ortenau. It also has several tools for dialogue and cross-border governance that enable it to foster and coordinate the daily contacts that make it one of the centres for cooperation in the Upper Rhine area.
The MP for Moselle, Christophe Arend, and his counterpart, Andreas Jung, have published a joint Franco-German declaration entitled "Together against coronavirus!", calling for Franco-German and European solidarity in this period of crisis.
The need to draw up a Cross-Border Cooperation Strategy was an opportunity for the Lille European Metropolis to rethink its cross-border strategy and regional leadership in this regard. In order to better assess the aspirations and orientations of its Cross-Border Cooperation Strategy, in 2016 the MEL commissioned the MOT to help prepare it, and set up a technical committee bringing together central government, the Region and the Department as well as the territories and urban planning agencies along the Franco-Belgian border.
The Cross-Border Cooperation Strategy first appeared with the French MAPTAM Act of 2014, which affirmed the role of metropolises. It is a strategic coordination document for the French side of the border aimed at enabling cross-border actions. The act provides for its drafting by metropolises that border on a foreign country, in association with "the department, the region and the municipalities concerned".
A new decree concerning the right of derogation available to prefects was adopted on 8 April 2020, in France. In accordance with the commitment made by the French President, and following an experiment conducted over nearly two years, it was decided to extend the power of derogation to all prefects and thereby step up the devolving of decisions to the local level.
On 2 April the European Commission put forward a new set of measures, the Coronavirus Response Investment Initiative Plus (CRII+), which introduced greater flexibility and simplified procedural steps to allow all unutilised support from the European Structural and Investment Funds to be mobilised to the fullest.
On 3 April the Commission published guidelines on EU emergency assistance with respect to cross-border cooperation in the area of healthcare.
Free movement of workers: on 30 March, the Commission published practical guidance to ensure the free movement of critical workers, including cross-border workers. More info
On 23 March, the Commission published practical guidance on the implementation of the “green lanes” provided for by the guidelines on border management measures.
Europe is now the epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic, COVID-19. In response to its spread, several EU Member States have implemented uncoordinated border closures and unilateral measures. On 13 March, the European Commission called for border measures to be "coordinated, operational, proportionate and effective".
"Regarding the question of borders, the President of the Republic has made great efforts with all the Member States of the European Union to reach a common position."
Since 16 March, the Strasbourg Transport Company has no longer been authorised to serve Germany, and the tramway going from Strasbourg to Kehl stops at the border. Within a few days, following the spread of the coronavirus in Europe, control and restriction measures were put in place at the Grand Est borders, while population containment was implemented.
While the coronavirus crisis is challenging and will challenge all European health systems, the equation should be even more complex to solve on the Franco-Luxembourg border.
As of March 18, Spain is the second most affected country in Europe by the COVID-19 epidemic with 13,910 diagnosed cases and 623 deaths. Since midnight March 17, Spain's land borders have been closed "in order to reduce the number of people infected with the virus both nationally and in Europe," according to Spanish Minister of Interior Fernando Grande-Marlaska.
