The EGTC Platform of the Committee of the Regions held its annual meeting on 20 April in Brussels, on the topic of the impact of the Schengen Area crisis on cross-border cooperation. During the event, the 2016 EGTC Award was given to the French-Spanish cross-border hospital in Cerdanya, the first of its kind in Europe.
The second edition of “Startup Show 42”, a cross-border digital innovation fair, was held on 6 April in Metz on the fringes of the Franco-German Council of Ministers. Over forty startups from the Lorraine Corridor (Epinal, Nancy, Metz, Thionville) and the QuattroPole city network (Luxembourg, Metz, Saarbrücken, Trier) were there to present their know-how and latest innovations.
DG REGIO has just published a 36-page report on the public consultation “Overcoming obstacles in border regions” carried out in autumn 2015.
This study, which has just been published on the UMS RIATE website, looks at the analysis of border regions on internal borders of the European Union with a methodological approach: How do we define border areas? How do we measure the multi-criterial territorial discontinuities? How do we qualify their evolution in time? How do we evaluate accessibility between border regions?
Since 2008, the IFSI (Nursing training institute) of the Centre Hospitalier de Sarreguemines in France and Völklingen Hospital in Germany have built a partnership in the field of nursing education, consisting of the development of interculturality and promotion of bilingualism in initial and ongoing training.
A symposium on cross-border student status was organised on 31 March in Bayonne by the students of the Master 2 in Cross-border and interregional cooperation at the University of Pau and Pays de l’Adour.
In the context of the Netherlands Presidency of the Council of the European Union, the House of the Dutch Provinces in Brussels hosted a seminar on 17 March 2016 on cross-border cooperation.
Cross-border cooperation was on the agenda for the 18th Franco-German Council of Ministers presided by François Hollande and Angela Merkel on 7 April 2016 in Metz.
At the request of the Haitian authorities, the French Embassy has mobilised the expertise of the MOT in a planning mission for a programme supporting the governance of Haitian local authorities located in the area bordering the Dominican Republic.
In order to fuel the debate at its upcoming annual conference on 24 May on “Borders: a resource for the inhabitants of border regions”, the MOT is launching a call for evidence on the impacts of tightening border controls in (cross-)border regions.
The 31st Congress of the European Cross-Border Grouping (GTE) brought together over 500 cross-border workers and numerous political representatives of the French-Swiss territory on 11 March 2016 in Archamps. According to Michel Charrat, president of the GTE, “2015 will no doubt go down in the history books of the cross-border phenomenon.
On march 18th, Basque Country’s President Iñigo Urkullu chaired the first 2016 Assembly of the Euroregion Aquitaine-Euskadi, at Vitoria-Gasteiz.
European photo competition for amateur and professionnal photographers. Before 30th June 2016.
The President of the Alsace-Champagne-Ardenne-Lorraine Region, Philippe Richert, and his first Vice-President, Patrick Weiten, have written to the French President of the Republic. They are asking for 'a strong signal' to be sent at the French-German council of ministers meeting on 7 April in Metz.
Over the past few months, the European Union has seen more and more border controls put in place within the Schengen Area. Two main reasons are put forward to justify them: fear of terrorism and the need to combat illegal immigration.
"Every day, we hear about another member country of the Schengen Area reinstating identity checks at its national borders in order to stop the inflow of illegal immigrants. While checks are necessary, they have a major impact on the daily lives of those who live close to these borders and habitually cross them: long traffic queues have appeared on our roads and the costs are starting to be felt by businesses and individuals."
The publication "Systèmes Territoriaux Régionaux" ("Regional Territorial Systems") that was brought out in January 2016 by the French Federation of Public Urban Planning Agencies (the FNAU) provides an analysis of territorial issues and interrelationships in France, through the lens of legislative developments and the issues at stake in public policy. A section written by the MOT is devoted to the cross-border dimension.
At a time when the paradigm of open borders conducive to free movement appears to be called into question by the political choices being made, borders remain complex geopolitical phenomena that continue to durably impact territories through either centripetal or centrifugal dynamics depending on the place.
On 4 March, the European Commission unveiled its roadmap for a return to the "normal" functioning of the Schengen Area of free movement "by the end of 2016".
The 2016 edition of the Strasbourg-Ortenau Eurodistrict marathon has been cancelled due to "participation by German runners being too low". With a cross-border route (13 km Germany and 29 km in France), it was the only binational marathon in the world.
The Upper Rhine Trinational Metropolitan Region is renewing its scheme to finance cross-border projects in the area of research and innovation entitled the "Science Offensive".
The "cross-border cooperation" interregional group of the Committee of the Regions, which was set up in July 2015, held its second meeting on 11 February 2016 in Brussels.
"There is no more contemporary phenomenon than that linked to borders," emphasised Jean-Barthélemy Debost, head of the network and partnerships department at the National Museum of the History of Immigration, in his opening address to the conference organised on 27 February by the MOT in connection with the exhibition "Frontières" ("Borders") in Paris.
The MOT made a contribution on the topic of cross-border tourism in Europe to the Commission for Natural Resources ("NAT") of the Committee of the Regions, which is currently working on an opinion on the subject entitled "Tourism as a driving force for regional cooperation across the EU".
The first-ever cross-border regional development strategy since the launch of the European programme LEADER is being put in place along the Moselle River where it divides Germany and Luxembourg.
