On February 8th, 2025, Nova Gorica and Gorizia will launch their European Capital of Culture (ECoC) 2025 journey, marking a historic first for a cross-border ECoC.
More than a hundred stakeholders from all over France gathered in Dunkirk and on the Franco-Belgian border on September 17th and 18th, 2024, for the MOT's general assembly, at the invitation of its members: the Dunkirk Urban Community (Communauté urbaine de Dunkerque), the Nord Department and the Flanders-Dunkirk Urban Planning Agency. The event was an opportunity to highlight the richness and uniqueness of cross-border cooperation on the Franco-Flemish coast, while reaffirming the importance of cooperation in the face of the common challenges faced by border territories!
On June 20th, 2024, the regulation "on a Union Code on the rules governing the movement of persons across borders" - the new "Schengen Code" - was published in the EU's Official Journal.
The Belgian Presidency of the Council of the EU and negotiators from the European Parliament reached a provisional agreement on February 6, 2024, regarding the amendment of EU law governing the functioning of the Schengen area at both its external and internal borders.
On 14 December 2021, the European Commission presented to the European Parliament its proposals for new rules to strengthen the governance of the Schengen Area. The draft regulation, which sets forth a "Union Code on the rules governing the movement of persons across borders", specifically takes account of "cross-border regions".
At a time when the pandemic is on the rise again in Europe and health measures are being strengthened on both sides of the Rhine, the European Territorial Authority of Alsace and the Grand Est Region, in cooperation with the Centre Européen de la Consommation (European Centre for Consumer Protection) and the INFOBEST network, have made available a digital tool to aid with crossing borders.
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 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.
