News
Spotlight on cross-border public services at the 42nd conference of urban planning agencies
January 2022
At a time when the closure of borders highlights the issues relating to cross-border living areas and their cohesion, the provision of public services specific to these territories was the subject of a dedicated workshop at the FNAU’s last national conference.
Co-facilitated by the MOT and the Atlantic-Pyrenees Urban Planning Agency (AUDAP), the workshop posed the question both of the provision of public services in territories at the edges of scopes of competence and that of measures designed to ensure their accessibility to all of the populations concerned.
Starting with the presentation of concrete experiences, notably: the account taken of access to Belgian public services by France Services in the Nord Department, the setting-up of an information and support portal for cross-border jobseekers in the Nouvelle Aquitaine-Euskadi-Navarra Euroregion, and local cross-border facilities in the Sare municipality (schools, medical centre, wastewater treatment plant, swimming pool, etc.), the discussions went on to look at ways to facilitate these measures and make them permanent.
In particular, these services endeavour to address the problems encountered by users in cross-border territories, such as assistance with administrative procedures, finding local schools, access to healthcare and emergency services, access to employment, and shelter for vulnerable populations. In this way, they contribute to and ensure social and territorial cohesion across the cross-border territory. They are also places of interaction between institutions and users that aim to improve the way the problems experienced by citizens are listened to and communication within institutions about the cross-border obstacles faced.
Beyond the issue of territorial cohesion and interaction with users, putting these public services in place is underpinned by multi-partner cooperation at several levels, which needs to be supported. A challenge for border-region urban planning agencies: are they "trusted third parties" able to stimulate local cross-border dialogue? At the least, prior to the structuring of partnerships, the importance of the development and observation of cross-border territories has been highlighted by the experiences of the AGUR (Flanders-Dunkirk Urban Planning Agency) and AUDAP, which were also discussed during the workshop.
https://www.fnau.org/fr/rencontre/42e-rencontre/
Back to list
