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 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.
Martinique's potential for economic development with the other countries of the Greater Caribbean is underexploited.
The Greater Caribbean comprises 4.3 million km2 of water stretching from the Caribbean Sea to the Gulf of Mexico, and numbers 800 million inhabitants.
France-Stratégie has published an analysis of the economic consequences of abandoning the Schengen agreements.
As set out on 22 January 2016 by Patrick Weiten, president of the Moselle Conseil Départemental and first vice-president of the Alsace Champagne-Ardenne Lorraine Region responsible for territorial and cross-border cooperation, the Trilingua scheme aimed at promoting the learning of German in Moselle is being replaced by two new experiments in this regard.
The first European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation (EGTC) to be set up by an alliance of universities is located in the Upper Rhine area.
A new section on the MOT's website lists more than 130 operational studies that have been produced by the MOT since it was set up in 1997.
Since 1 January 2016, pensioners in French and German border regions who previously worked in the other country no longer run the risk of being taxed twice.
