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The MOT network launches an experiment on "cross-border living areas"

October 2022

The MOT network launches an experiment on "cross-border living areas"

On September 19th, 2022, the MOT organised a meeting to launch the "cross-border living areas experiment" project. The objective is to define the concept of "cross-border living areas" and to analyse the needs and expectations of the territories concerned, as well as the legal opportunities and obstacles, in order to arrive at recommendations.

Supported by the partners and members of the network, it emerged during the last territorial meetings at the end of 2021 and beginning of 2022. Several territories had asked the MOT to propose an experiment aimed at the recognition of specific spaces known as "living areas" in one or more pilot cross-border territories wishing to take part in the projects.

Ultimately, the idea is to propose a differentiated model in which public policies adapt to the situations lived in these border areas, which are faced with interdependencies of cross-border proximity as well as distance from their national decision-making centre, and in which cross-border living areas are apprehended and considered as such. This consideration of the concept of "cross-border living areas" must be the occasion for a more rigorous and shared approach to the border reality, essential for appropriate treatment by public policies, in the service of people, both as economic actors and as citizens, couples, families and users of public services.

This need for recognition has accelerated since the health crisis, when many border crossings were blocked or strictly controlled and some border segments were even closed by fences. On these borders, the crisis has impacted first and foremostthe inhabitants, whose daily life, which usually leads them across borders for work, consumption or simply human relations, has been disrupted. The actors of local or national public services, whose operation, or even structure, as in the case of the Cerdagne hospital, are cross-border, have been severely tested.

This return of borders must be an opportunity to question the European and cross-border model. This is what the "experimentation with cross-border living areas" project proposes, and it is also a chanceto seize the new opportunities offered by the French legislator in terms of experimentation and differentiation1.


1. See in particular the organic law no. 2021-467 of 19 April 2021 on the simplification of experiments implemented based on the fourth paragraph of Article 72 of the Constitution.

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