News
“Small Towns of Tomorrow”: a “flash” mission to Bouzonville and Sierck-les-Bains
June 2022
Close to the Franco-German and Franco-Luxembourg borders, Bouzonville and Sierck-les-Bains are drawing up their cross-border goals with the help of the MOT.
The MOT was commissioned to carry out an initial individualised assistance mission within the framework of the “Small Towns of Tomorrow” programme run by the National Agency for Territorial Cohesion (ANCT). It covers the Bouzonvillois Three Borders Community of Municipalities, the town of Sierck-les-Bains and the town of Bouzonville (Moselle).
The mission’s first objective is to strengthen dialogue with the border partners and to develop an overall cross-border strategic vision for the territory. A mapping of the French, Luxembourg and German dialogue partners has been produced in order to help understand the different levels of competence on the different sides.
Three days of meetings and mobilisation of players
Two days – 10-11 May – were devoted to carrying out interviews in the cross-border territory in order to gather points of view from players on the three sides.
Then on 12 May, the MOT ran several workshops that brought together around forty technical partners from the three countries. They were divided into three thematic groups: “environment and mobility”, “tourism and attractiveness” and “public services and healthcare provision”. The aim was to draw up joint operational proposals based on the issues identified during the interviews: the first step towards a cross-border strategic dialogue.
An operational roadmap
Following the workshops, the MOT summarised their findings in the form of an operational roadmap. The objective for the Bouzonvillois Three Borders Community of Municipalities is now to establish this multi-level strategic dialogue over the long term and to coordinate the levels of action.
Another lesson from this first experience is that technical assistance from the “Small Towns of Tomorrow” programme, with the support of the ANCT and the Banque des Territoires, helps new cross-border strategic opportunities to emerge. These particularly concern territories located away from the major cross-border conurbations, whose multi-level governance has long been established.
