Catalan Cross-border Area

Countries: Spain , France
Regions concerned: Catalonia (Spain); Pyrénées-Orientales department (France)

Overview

The Catalan Cross-border Area brings together more than a million inhabitants on an area of 10,000 km², reaching from the French department of “Pyrénées-Orientales” (Northern Catalonia) to the province of Girona in Spain (Southern Catalonia).
Thanks to its strategic position on the European corridor linking the Iberian Peninsula to the rest of Europe, it offers a tremendous potential for opening up to the Mediterranean basin. In addition, it is experiencing an intensification of its international trade, particularly with Asia and Maghreb.

Cross-border actors seek to harmonise and provide a common structure to this cross-border area, through a concerted policy of spatial planning and sustainable development.

The goal is to find solutions to everyday problems for inhabitants in various fields, such as employment, the local economy, services, means of communication, tourism, culture, the environment, education, etc.

To this end, the French and Catalan partners have signed an agreement on the statutes of a future joint cross-border body, in the form of an EGTC, giving the Eurodistrict legal personality and financial autonomy.