In the presence of Joël Giraud, Minister of State for Rural Affairs under the Minister for Territorial Cohesion and Relations with Local Government, more than a hundred participants from all of France’s borders gathered for the MOT’s general assembly on 21-22 September in Morteau and La Chaux-de-Fonds, at the invitation of the Doubs Urban Conurbation.
On 31 August 2021, the Belgian and Luxembourg Ministers of Health signed a declaration of intent with a view to negotiating a framework agreement on cross-border healthcare cooperation between the two countries.
The European conference on participation, organised by the "Décider Ensemble" network, took place in Amiens from 13 to 17 September. Designing public services, involving citizens in the ecological transition and strengthening the European Union’s representative institutions and democratic legitimacy were among the themes spotlighted at this conference of participatory democracy players.
Jean Peyrony, the MOT’s Director-General spoke at two conferences:
"The Doubs Urban Conurbation was set up in 2006. Initially an informal collaboration, it led to the creation of a local grouping of cross-border cooperation, the only one in the Franco-Swiss Jura Arc running between the Basel Trinational Eurodistrict and Greater Geneva. Today the LGCC comprises the Val de Morteau group of municipalities and the towns of Chaux-de-Fonds and Le Locle.
The MOT’s general assembly is taking place this year in Morteau and La Chaux-de-Fonds on 21-22 September, at the invitation of the Doubs Urban Conurbation, a member of its network. Joël Giraud, Minister of State under the Minister for Territorial Cohesion, in charge of Rurality (France) and former Vice-President of the MOT, will speak at the end of the first day.
Seven years after its creation, the LGCC* of the Doubs Urban Conurbation (Agglomération Urbaine du Doubs – AUD) has shown its effectiveness in helping local elected representatives to get to know one another better, which has enabled them to set out joint projects while at the same time speaking with one voice on behalf of the binational territory.
This European Commission report, published on 13 July, looks at the lessons of the Covid crisis and the initiatives carried out since the publication of its 2017 Communication “Boosting growth and cohesion in EU border regions”.
Adopted on 1 July, this resolution constitutes an official contribution from the CoR to the Conference on the Future of Europe. It sets out the concrete proposals of the CoR and the European Cross-Border Citizens’ Alliance (AEBR, MOT and CESCI) to put cross-border cooperation back at the top of the EU's policy agenda after a year disrupted by the pandemic.
Following its adoption at its first reading in the Senate on 21 July 2021, the 3DS bill (standing for “differentiation, decentralisation, deconcentration and various measures to simplify local public action”) will be examined under a fast-track procedure in the Assemblée Nationale, in France, from the beginning of December. Taking on a number of the proposals put forward by the MOT, the senators adopted a series of amendments relating to cross-border issues.
What have been the different forms of border crisis since the start of 2020? Alongside the joint initiatives to manage the crises, what are the obvious imbalances they have revealed? To answer these questions, the MOT is publishing a summary of one year of reflections by its “Territorial Solidarities” working group.
The MOT’s President, Christian Dupessey, met the Minister Clément Beaune on 25 August to discuss the issues facing cross-border living areas and the MOT’s role in supporting them.
In order to involve the greatest number of citizens in the Conference on the Future of Europe, the Committee of the Regions (CoR) has initiated the setting-up of a “European network of regional and local councillors for the EU”.
In early July, the European Court of Auditors published a report on the implementation of Interreg programmes. It highlighted that “the programmes have clear strategies for addressing the challenges facing the cross-border regions”, but that they are “limited [in their ability] to unlock the potential of these regions”.
Following on from the “Borders in Globalization” (BIG) project, this new network, “21st Century Borders: Emergent Challenges Among and Within States”, brings together nine intergovernmental and transnational organisations including the MOT, as well as leading universities (from 15 countries*). Led by researchers at the University of Victoria (Canada), it has just received funding of over $9 million.
The MOT, in partnership with the PAMINA Eurodistrict and with the support of the European Committee of the Regions, held a high-level event on existing and missing cross-border rail links.
Organised by the European Committee of the Regions in association with the other founding partners of the European Cross-Border Citizens Alliance (the MOT, AEBR and, CESCI), on 5 July the Conference on the Future of Cross-Border Cooperation brought together nearly 200 participants.
On 23 June, the European Parliament adopted the five “cohesion policy” regulations including that on the Interreg programme.
The health situation threw up a major challenge – that of providing a suitable format for citizens’ participation in the middle of a pandemic. In collaboration with the Euro-Institut and the MOT, the Basel Trinational Eurodistrict (ETB) developed a concept organised around a questionnaire and several virtual events. The aim was both to ensure broad participation from the population and to facilitate real exchanges between citizens from the three countries.
The Basel trinational conurbation is a genuinely shared living area that is strongly interconnected. In designing our Strategy 2030, it seemed extremely important to us to set our goals in accordance with what matters to the region’s population.
The MOT has just published its activity report for 2020, a year marked by the closure of many borders, placing cross-border territories on “the front line” of the health crisis.
On 27 May the French Prime Minister, Jean Castex, presented the interministerial “Future of mountains” plan. In an interview with the National Agency for Territorial Cohesion (ANCT), Joël Giraud, Minister of State for Rural Affairs, sets out the major components of this large-scale plan that will mobilise nearly €650 million.
The latest Franco-German Council of Ministers, which met on 31 May 2021 alongside the meeting between Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel, took stock of the implementation of the Aachen Treaty and the substantial advances in Franco-German cooperation over the past few months. It was also an opportunity to launch new cooperation initiatives, notably in the areas of healthcare, culture and youth, as well as to prepare for the major upcoming international and European events.
The health crisis put the inhabitants of border regions in an unprecedented position that placed a strain on all aspects of their daily lives. In this case, the daily lives of the inhabitants of the cross-border living area of the Lille-Kortrijk-Tournai Eurometropolis were seriously disrupted. The concrete effects of these restrictions need to be analysed in greater depth to learn the lessons in order to act better in the future.
