Concrete solutions to reduce tensions in cross-border employment

Across all of France’s borders—with Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, Andorra, and Monaco—the same sectors appear to be experiencing difficulties: healthcare, construction, manufacturing, hospitality and catering, agriculture, and digital technology.

Nearly 500,000 cross-border workers live in France and work in neighboring countries, leading to wage competition that undermines local employment. While Switzerland and Luxembourg account for the bulk of the flow, tensions are found to varying degrees at all borders.

The group identified six areas of focus, around which several proposals were formulated:

• Wage competition with neighboring countries
  → Reduce wage gaps through tax or social incentive mechanisms, support local companies that innovate in employee retention, and experiment with employment free zones.
  → Encourage cross-border economic development by attracting foreign companies to set up on the French side, particularly in the Jura region.
• Jobs in high demand on both sides of the border
  → Implement co-financed and certified cross-border training programs, promote mutual recognition of certifications, develop shared local economic sectors and cross-border temporary employment schemes.
• Housing and cost of living
  → Develop a stock of affordable housing for local workers, adjust property taxes according to income and place of work, and trial a bonus/penalty mechanism to offset the additional cost of housing.
  → Adapt land and social policies (e.g., Bail Réel Solidaire in the French Genevois region) to enhance residential attractiveness.
• Taxation and solidarity-based redistribution
  → Experiment with a mechanism for fiscal co-development between neighboring states to support labor-supplying territories (e.g., the Geneva financial compensation model).
  → Create cross-border solidarity funds to finance transport infrastructure and public services.
• Living and working conditions
  → Promote the advantages of the French side: better quality of life, reduced mobility, social and salary benefits, initiatives in favor of teleworking and the four-day week.
  → Promote non-relocatable industries and strengthen worker reception measures (“Welcome pack,” relocation bonuses, etc.).
• Simplified access to employment and recognition of skills
  → Remove administrative barriers through cross-border one-stop shops and experiments inspired by the European B-Solutions and BRIDGEforEU programs.
  → Facilitate professional mobility, particularly for RSA beneficiaries, through financial incentives and mutual recognition of qualifications.

Participants emphasized the need for a “win-win” balance between territories, without pitting border regions against non-border regions, and for concrete, coordinated solutions to be developed.

The group’s proposals will feed into a collective advocacy effort by the MOT and its partners, which will be discussed at the National Conference on Cross-Border Cooperation on December 4 in Paris, before being officially published in early 2026.

“The aim is to strengthen the overall balance between the border areas and to help increase both the attractiveness and robustness of the economic system in each border area. This working group shows that there is real scope for further exploration, which fully justifies the work and energy we are putting into it,” concluded Nathan Sourisseau.