"Every day, we hear about another member country of the Schengen Area reinstating identity checks at its national borders in order to stop the inflow of illegal immigrants. While checks are necessary, they have a major impact on the daily lives of those who live close to these borders and habitually cross them: long traffic queues have appeared on our roads and the costs are starting to be felt by businesses and individuals."
The publication "Systèmes Territoriaux Régionaux" ("Regional Territorial Systems") that was brought out in January 2016 by the French Federation of Public Urban Planning Agencies (the FNAU) provides an analysis of territorial issues and interrelationships in France, through the lens of legislative developments and the issues at stake in public policy. A section written by the MOT is devoted to the cross-border dimension.
At a time when the paradigm of open borders conducive to free movement appears to be called into question by the political choices being made, borders remain complex geopolitical phenomena that continue to durably impact territories through either centripetal or centrifugal dynamics depending on the place.
On 4 March, the European Commission unveiled its roadmap for a return to the "normal" functioning of the Schengen Area of free movement "by the end of 2016".
The 2016 edition of the Strasbourg-Ortenau Eurodistrict marathon has been cancelled due to "participation by German runners being too low". With a cross-border route (13 km Germany and 29 km in France), it was the only binational marathon in the world.
The Upper Rhine Trinational Metropolitan Region is renewing its scheme to finance cross-border projects in the area of research and innovation entitled the "Science Offensive".
The "cross-border cooperation" interregional group of the Committee of the Regions, which was set up in July 2015, held its second meeting on 11 February 2016 in Brussels.
"There is no more contemporary phenomenon than that linked to borders," emphasised Jean-Barthélemy Debost, head of the network and partnerships department at the National Museum of the History of Immigration, in his opening address to the conference organised on 27 February by the MOT in connection with the exhibition "Frontières" ("Borders") in Paris.
The MOT made a contribution on the topic of cross-border tourism in Europe to the Commission for Natural Resources ("NAT") of the Committee of the Regions, which is currently working on an opinion on the subject entitled "Tourism as a driving force for regional cooperation across the EU".
The first-ever cross-border regional development strategy since the launch of the European programme LEADER is being put in place along the Moselle River where it divides Germany and Luxembourg.
Martinique's potential for economic development with the other countries of the Greater Caribbean is underexploited.
The Greater Caribbean comprises 4.3 million km2 of water stretching from the Caribbean Sea to the Gulf of Mexico, and numbers 800 million inhabitants.
All of the territorial cooperation operational programmes for the 2014-2020 period have been approved by the European Commission, and the first calls for projects have been issued.
France-Stratégie has published an analysis of the economic consequences of abandoning the Schengen agreements.
As set out on 22 January 2016 by Patrick Weiten, president of the Moselle Conseil Départemental and first vice-president of the Alsace Champagne-Ardenne Lorraine Region responsible for territorial and cross-border cooperation, the Trilingua scheme aimed at promoting the learning of German in Moselle is being replaced by two new experiments in this regard.
The first European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation (EGTC) to be set up by an alliance of universities is located in the Upper Rhine area.
A new section on the MOT's website lists more than 130 operational studies that have been produced by the MOT since it was set up in 1997.
Since 1 January 2016, pensioners in French and German border regions who previously worked in the other country no longer run the risk of being taxed twice.
Doctoral thesis in geography by Nicolas Escach, under the supervision of Lydia Coudroy from Lille and Boris Grésillon, defended in 2014 at the École normale supérieure in Lyons. Published in French – Abstract in English.
From 26 to 28 January 2016 in Marseilles, the Institut Catholique de la Méditerranée, the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Region and the Villa Méditerranée jointly organised, together with lecturers and students from different universities, the fourth edition of the " Trans/frontières et dialogue des disciplines" ("Cross/boundaries and dialogue between disciplines") on the topic "The age of transitions to another generation of players?".
The "Grex" platform was set up on 4 January 2016 in order to provide operational support to any sole trader or SME wishing to develop an economic partnership in the Greater Region.
Since September 2015, DG REGIO's cross-border cooperation unit has been carrying out a large-scale initiative known as the "Cross-Border Review" aimed at analysing the administrative and legal obstacles that persist along the European Union's internal borders.
Since it was set up in 1997, the MOT has developed operational and legal expertise on many cross-border topics. Network members have first call on this experience. In 2011, the MOT introduced the "service vouchers", which enable every member along France's borders to benefit from one day of work per year from the MOT's technical team. It is now making available in the members' space on its website the technical notes produced in this context [in French only].
In October 2015, the Greater Geneva local grouping of cross-border cooperation (LGCC) launched an initiative to draw up a territorial project for the whole of the French-Vaud-Geneva conurbation for the 2016-2030 period. This process of reflection will be completed at the end of this year. It involves the elected representatives of the region, both Swiss and French, and cross-border civil society organised through the Greater Geneva Conurbation Forum.
