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Basel Trinational Eurodistrict - Involving inhabitants in thinking about the future of their trinational region
July 2021
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 large number of participants and very high proportion of responses to the questions posed attest to the great desire of the population to take part in the thinking about the future of the trinational region. Indeed, living in the border region is regarded as an asset by 88% of the people questioned. In order to fully benefit from the region’s potential, citizens wish above all to see improved cross-border mobility and reliable cross-border information. With 402 concrete wishes and ideas for diverse projects – whether it be bus services, a cross-border volunteering platform or a big post-Covid trinational celebration – the region’s citizens have made promising suggestions for the future.
In workshops preceding the main event, the citizens’ forum, the participants themselves chose the themes that seemed particularly important to them for the future of the cross-border region. It was these themes that around 50 citizens discussed in trinational groups at an online forum with a view to proposing concrete projects.
The results of this participatory process will inform the discussions about the ETB’s Strategy 2030 within its political and technical working groups. In these groups, the right interlocutors and the feasibility of project ideas will be identified.
More info
Read the editorial by Thomas Zeller, President of the ETB, Vice-President of the Saint-Louis Conurbation and Mayor of Hegenheim
Photo: Julien Kauffmann
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