In light of the elaboration of a new European strategy for the “outermost regions” (ORs), the Regional Development Commission of the European Parliament published a report in March 2017 to promote cohesion and development in the ORs by applying article 349 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) in an innovative and positive manner.
On 20 and 21 September 2017 in Brussels, a conference was held to mark the adoption of the Communication entitled “Boosting growth and cohesion in EU border regions”.
Every year, the MOT publishes a dossier highlighting exemplary cross-border projects along French borders.
This report, submitted by the General Commission for Territorial Equality (CGET) to the Prime Minister, recommends the creation of a pôle métropolitain encompassing more than 300,000 inhabitants on the border with Belgium and Luxembourg. This would enable North Lorraine to take advantage of its geographical position and of the great attractiveness of its immediate neighbours.
Innovation does not stop at France's borders The Nice Côte d'Azur Metropolis, which now features among the 10 leading smart cities in the world, has been built up around a very dense international ecosystem. This has been in its DNA for a very long time…
Helping entrepreneurs located on either side of the border to create new digital services thanks to geodata on Greater Geneva – this is the aim of the Interreg project "Geofab Greater Geneva" launched on 4 April 2017.*
The CGET has published a study - available in English - on the involvement of the private sector in European territorial cooperation programmes (INTERREG).
Michel Charrat, the President of the European Cross-Border Grouping and Treasurer of the MOT, gives us his analysis of the implementation of the vote in February 2014 in Switzerland, which was aimed at restricting the number of foreign workers.
The directors of the Chambers of Commerce and Industry of Perpignan, Girona, Lleida and Andorra have officially launched the cross-border Chamber of Commerce and Industry “Pirineus Med”: a new body which aims to develop exchanges and cross-border knowledge, and whose goal is to “establish trade relations in the cross-border territory”.
The Working Community of the Pyrenees (CTP) brings together the French and Spanish border regions, and Andorra. Its main objective is to contribute to harmonious and coordinated development of the Pyrenean massif.
The work of 174 pages offers an environmental, social and economic inventory of the cross-border territory of Greater Geneva on the French-Swiss border.
The project “Compétences sans Frontières” (Skills without Borders) was launched on 1 October 2016. Its goal is to contribute to reducing the imbalance of supply and demand in the job market of the France-Wallonia-Flanders cross-border region.
"Connect Innovation Bai!", "MAREA", "H2Ogurea" and "EDERBIDEA" of the names of four of the new projects selected in the first call for projects under POCTEFA 2014-2020.
The Annual Conference of the MOT brought together 150 participants on 24 May 2016 in the Palais de la Porte Dorée, home of the French National Museum of the History of Immigration, in conjunction with the exhibition “Frontières” (“Borders”) currently on view.
Lancé à l’automne 2014 par le président de la Commission européenne, le plan "Juncker" vise à relancer les investissements en particulier dans les infrastructures, les industries de demain et les compétences. Composé de deux volets – 75 milliards d’euros pour les PME et 240 milliards d’euros pour les infrastructures – il a été mis en œuvre rapidement sur le terrain.
The French-German association has launched two new websites aimed at providing consumers with better information.
The second edition of “Startup Show 42”, a cross-border digital innovation fair, was held on 6 April in Metz on the fringes of the Franco-German Council of Ministers. Over forty startups from the Lorraine Corridor (Epinal, Nancy, Metz, Thionville) and the QuattroPole city network (Luxembourg, Metz, Saarbrücken, Trier) were there to present their know-how and latest innovations.
This study, which has just been published on the UMS RIATE website, looks at the analysis of border regions on internal borders of the European Union with a methodological approach: How do we define border areas? How do we measure the multi-criterial territorial discontinuities? How do we qualify their evolution in time? How do we evaluate accessibility between border regions?
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".
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.
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.
At the end of 2015, the European Cross-Border Grouping (Groupement Transfrontalier Européen, GTE) was alerted by Switzerland's temping agencies regarding the difficulties they are encountering in hiring French unemployed people as temporary workers.
The final conference of the project embarked on by the MOT in 2014 on cross-border economic development brought together nearly 180 people in Paris on 30 September.
Since January 2014, the MOT has been carrying out a project supported by the national technical assistance programme Europ'Act relating to the economic development of the cross-border territories along France's borders. The results of this work will be presented at the project's final conference on 30 September in Paris.
