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Cross-border strategies being drawn up in cross-border urban areas
January 2020The MAPTAM Act* enables border metropolises to draw up a Cross-Border Cooperation Strategy. Lille, Strasbourg and Nice have taken up this opportunity and have been working since 2018, with support from the MOT, on formulating a strategy to structure their cross-border policy. Other territories have followed suit such as the Basque Country Conurbation Community.
In the case of Lille, Strasbourg and the Basque Country, the MOT has supported the urban planning agencies in the area of cross-border governance. In the case of the Nice Côte d’Azur Metropolis, its work covers the whole of the strategy: territorial assessment, points of view of French and neighbouring-country players, and breaking the strategy down into territorial levels (local, conurbation-wide, Euroregional and macro-regional) and concrete actions.
To date, most of the strategies have been approved by the relevant executives: for the Basque Country on 14 December, Nice on 16 December, and Strasbourg on 18 December.
With its cross-cutting overview, the MOT accompanied representatives of the three metropolises and the Basque Country Conurbation to an initial work meeting with DG REGIO held on 19 December in Brussels. In addition to the sharing of experiences between the different conurbations, the meeting addressed: the role of European cohesion policy programmes with respect to cross-border urban areas, the place of cities and cross-border entities in these programmes, links with macro-regional strategies and other policies, and reflections about cross-border urban governance.
* The Modernisation of Territorial Public Action and Affirmation of Metropolises Act of 27 January 2014.
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