The MOT was present on Tuesday, May 23rd, at the Palais des Congrès in Paris for the ANCTour, an event bringing together all the services, programmes and schemes of the Agence Nationale de la Cohésion des Territoires.
The conference to launch the new cross-border legal access point, located at the heart of the Strasbourg-Kehl conurbation, was held on May 10th, 2023 at the Strasbourg judicial court. Its chairman, Thierry Ghera, gives us his view on this new service, the first of its kind in Europe.
On May 17th, 2023, a meeting between the president of the Occitanie region, Carole Delga, and Père Aragones, president of Catalonia, in Barcelona, agreed on the creation of a cross-border working group, the aim of which will be to improve water management and help populations cope with drought.
Since 2007, the "Targeted Analyses" of the ESPON programme have supported the process of territorial development in Europe, at local, regional and national levels. These analyses include sound methodologies and scientific expertise to provide tailor-made analytical studies to support territorial decision-making. The new call for proposals for the ESPON 2030 Programme is open until June 23rd 2023!
Cross-border obstacles affect the daily development of cross-border living areas and services dedicated to their inhabitants. The reduction of these obstacles requires a high degree of cooperation between Member States. That is why, in 2018, the European Commission proposed a tool, the "European Cross-Border Mechanism" (ECBM), dedicated to the resolution of cross-border legal and administrative obstacles. But the Commission's proposal for a regulation on this tool is currently stalled at the Council.
The conference "Living in Border Regions - Tackling the challenges" was organized on April 17th, 2023, in Brussels, by the European Alliance for Cross-Border Citizens (CoR, MOT, AEBR, CESCI). Its objective was to study the possible ways to relaunch the draft regulation on the "European Cross-Border Mechanism" (ECBM).
At the beginning of May, the European Commission published its report on the programming of the cohesion policy 2021-2027. It foresees the creation of 1.3 million jobs in Europe by the end of the programming period, with an increase of 0.5% of the EU GDP and up to 4% in some Member States.
The Treaty of Aachen mandated the Franco-German Cross-Border Cooperation Committee (CBC) to analyse the impact of legislation on border regions, with the aim of avoiding "the emergence of new legal difficulties in everyday cross-border life".
At the conference "Border Region Academy: Border regions of Germany with its neighboring countries" organized by the German Federal Office for Spatial Planning on April 20th and 21st in Berlin, in which the MOT participated, several significant studies for cross-border cooperation were presented.
This study, which has just been published by the Institut Montaigne, establishes a detailed diagnosis of the employment situation in the territory of the European Metropolis of Lille, and aims to identify the various levers that would allow action to be taken to better match the Lille labor market.
To produce a map based on the feelings of citizens, the Forum of the Eurometropolis Lille-Kortrijk-Tournai - who constitutes its citizen assembly - launched this project a year ago to capture the "emotional landscape of the cross-border living area".
Financed within the framework of the Interreg Grande Région program, the RECOTTE [RECOnversion of Territories through Ecological Transition] project focused on the reconversion of territories through ecological transition on a local cross-border scale.
The 7th Franco-Luxembourg Intergovernmental Commission (IGC) was held in Thionville on April 17th, 2023, in the presence of Laurence Boone, Secretary of State to the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, responsible for Europe, and Corinne Cahen, Minister for the Greater Region of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.
On May 2nd, 2023, the 4th meeting of the "Cross-border ecological transition" working group of the MOT network, which brought together about thirty participants around the question: "how to better involve citizens in the ecological transition of cross-border territories?", took place.
I was entrusted last March with the presidency of the cross-border strategy of Ardennes initiated in 2019 by the MOT and the Belgian intermunicipal structure IDELUX. The latter covers the territory of the Ardennes department and the Walloon provinces of Luxembourg and Namur.
On April 13th, 2023, the second meeting of the MOT-ANCT working group dedicated to observation, co-hosted by the Atlantic and Pyrenees Urban Planning Agency (AUDAP) and the French Riviera Agglomeration Community (CARF), took place.
A joint initiative of the European Committee of the Regions and European territorial associations to shape the future of cohesion policy: only one week left to participate!
Discover the editorial by Xavier Faure, President of the Executive Board of the Cerdanya Hospital EGTC, Project Director at the Occitania Regional Health Agency, and his article: "In 2023, the Cerdagne hospital will develop its cross-border healthcare offer".
For almost a decade, the Cerdagne hospital has demonstrated that a cross-border public hospital service can operate within a controlled budget, with an increasing number of patients, and a hybrid legal model, an example of a concrete achievement of the Europe of Health.
Following the recent publication of its thematic Cahiers on cross-border mobility, the MOT is now announcing the launch of a new project: a booklet on the subject of health.
Following the conference "Cities and Metropolises in France and Germany" on March 14th, this report of the ARL (Academy for Territorial Development in the Leibniz Association) is available in French and in English. It includes a contribution by Jean Peyrony, Franziska Sielker and Thomas Perrin, entitled "Cross-border territorial cooperation between France and Germany: evolution, convergence and perspectives".
The MOT, supported by sixteen partners of its network, initiated a "cross-border living areas experiment" at the end of 2022.
At the beginning of 2023, the DG REGIO of the European Commission together with the OECD have launched a pilot project for multi-level governance and the development of co-developed cross-border strategies.
