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The Lille European Metropolis’s Cross-Border Cooperation Strategy – an opportunity to rethink its cross-border strategy
April 2020
The need to draw up a Cross-Border Cooperation Strategy was an opportunity for the Lille European Metropolis to rethink its cross-border strategy and regional leadership in this regard. In order to better assess the aspirations and orientations of its Cross-Border Cooperation Strategy, in 2016 the MEL commissioned the MOT to help prepare it, and set up a technical committee bringing together central government, the Region and the Department as well as the territories and urban planning agencies along the Franco-Belgian border.
This first phase resulted in a framework deliberation in December 2017, which set out four priority levels of issues and actions (concerning border municipalities, the Lille Metropolis, the Euroregion including the coast and the inter-metropolitan relationship with Brussels). This strategic framework also highlighted the need for coordination on each side of the border given the number of partner institutions on either side.
The MEL commissioned the Lille Metropolis Development and Urban Planning Agency (ADULM) to help flesh out the strategic content of the Cross-Border Cooperation Strategy and combine these levels with five thematic areas (mobility, citizenship, economic development, climate issues and quality of life). This also made it possible to foster, during the whole process of drawing up the Regional Spatial Planning, Sustainable Development and Territorial Equality Strategy (SRADDET), dialogue between the MEL and the Hauts de France Region, as well as with the regional border territories.
The MEL now has a governance manual and an operational framework to be incorporated into future European Territorial Cooperation programmes, which are designed to guide it together with the French partners in the Lille-Kortrijk-Tournai Eurometropolis in its response to new cross-border challenges, such as anticipating and managing ecological and environmental, health, economic or social crises.
More info (ADULM website) [FR]
More info (MOT website) [FR]
Read the article: What is a Cross-Border Cooperation Strategy?
Photo: Métropole Européenne de Lille / Max Lerouge
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