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Luxembourg presidency of the EU Council: Identifying the obstacles to cooperation
March 2015
The MOT network is mobilised under EU Luxembourg's presidency (2nd half of 2015) to identify the obstacles to cross-border cooperation. In this context, a workshop "The need for specific legal provisions to boost cross-border cooperation" is organised by the Presidency on 19th May 2015.
Twenty-five years of European territorial cooperation have passed since 1990 and the launch of the EU's INTERREG initiative. In spite of the very positive progress made, an assessment in 2015 shows that many obstacles to cross-border cooperation still remain to be overcome, even though territorial cohesion has featured in the EU Treaty since 2007. That is why the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg has placed cross-border cooperation serving European integration and territorial cohesion at the heart of its priorities for its EU Council presidency.
If we wish to continue to strengthen this functional and citizen-oriented integration, a quantitative leap needs to be made in the regions that underpin it: cross-border territories. This is therefore an opportunity to engage in genuine joint reflection aimed at identifying the different obstacles that hamper cooperation.
Mandated by the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the MOT has launched a consultation of its network in association with its strategic European partners* in order to obtain updated knowledge of the obstacles to cooperation, prerequisite for proposed solutions at the European level. These proposals could be applied on each border at the administrative, legal and political levels.
The search for solutions may for example involve:
- the joint action of two or more States (governance, international agreements, changes to national legislation, etc.),
- changes to European legislation (directive, sectoral regulation, inter-service coordination, cross-border impact assessments, etc.); in particular, Luxembourg wishes to try out the idea of a new European legal instrument that makes it possible to experiment
* Such as the AEBR, the Committee of the Regions, INTERACT, the Budapest Platform partners, the TEIN network, the Nordic Council, the RIET, and many other “resource” practitioners on the European borders.
The questionnaire
More info for members [FR]
Workshop "The need for specific legal provisions to boost cross-border cooperation"
19 May 2015 in Luxemburg. This workshop is part of the Luxembourg Presidency Programme.
More info
