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Cross-border
economic
development
11
Preamble
According to this hypothesis, territorial economic development
should be addressed using a cross-border approach:
to put it simply, this means looking at economic development
across the whole of a territory shared between two countries,
requiring coordination of public- and private-sector players
involved in economic development in two different legal,
administrative and tax systems.
Cross-border economic
opportunities
In a cross-border setting, the differentials in terms of taxes, wages,
the unemployment rate and prices, and linguistic, administrative and
cultural differences, etc. can be regarded as opportunities or constraints
depending on one’s point of view.
Households and businesses take advantage of these differentials
in their choice of where to settle and which markets to participate
in (consumption, property, work, etc.). The ability of inhabitants
and businesses to operate in two languages, two cultures and two
administrative environments is an asset that opens up their horizon
not only to the cross-border territory, but also to all of the countries
involved, and potentially to Europe and the world.
Businesses, like territories, are in competition with one another, in a
national context and even more so in a cross-border setting. For their
part, the public authorities mostly act within a national context in their
promotion of economic development.
But by participating in the European area (European Union and third
countries that have agreements with it), countries have chosen to
cooperate.
In cross-border territories, the challenge is to jointly
exploit the shared territorial capital.
Public-sector and private-sector players therefore find themselves in a
complex interplay between competition and cooperation on either side
of the border. Regarding a territory as a cross-border one provides an
opportunity to benefit from the advantages present on both sides of
the border in order to facilitate the territory’s economic development;
often perceived as peripheral in the national context, a border region
that becomes an integral part of a cross-border territory can promote
the advantages of the areas in both of the countries. Within the territory,
a dynamic develops of “co-opetition” – a term combining cooperation
and competition used to indicate that competition still exists, but that
new synergies can be found through cooperation which can benefit the
development of the cross-border territory as a whole.
Two rationales
for cooperating:
complementarity and
economies of scale
8
When two or three systems corresponding to
different countries encounter one another at a border,
businesses have the possibility of making the most of
the complementarities and of “taking what is best” from
each country’s system.
What at first sight seems to be a difficulty also constitutes an opportunity:
businesses can take advantage of the differences by choosing the system
best-suited to their needs (e.g. a business locates its tertiary functions
on one side of the border and its logistical functions on the other), or
by exploiting the territory’s multicultural and multilingual potential; the
same is true for households, which as consumers can have the best of
both worlds in terms of where they live, work and consume.
8
Or, to use the geographer Jacques Levy’s expression: urban life as a combination of diversity
and density; see J.Levy et M.Lussault,
Dictionnaire de la géographie et de l’espace des
sociétés
, Belin, 2003.
Haut-Rhin
Basel
BADEN-WÜRTTEMBERG
SWITZERLAND
Number of cross-borderworkers
29 862
22 400
395
600
1900
38 194
Bas-Rhin
ALSACE
BS+BL+AG+SO
GERMANY
FRANCE
Source : IBFA,BFS,CNAM2012
BS :Basel-Stadt
BL :Basel-Land
AG :Aargau
SO :Solothurn
100 km
FRANCE
HAMPSHIRE
ISLEOFWIGHT
Manche
WALLONIA
ARC MANCHE
BELGIUM
GERMANY
RHINELAND-
PALATINATE
SAARLAND
German-speaking
Community of
Belgium
Brussels
50 km
North Sea
LORRAINE
LUXEMBOURG
Luxembourg
Number of cross-borderworkers
75399
35590
29496
8140
17682
5320
4627
3497
Source : IGSS,BA, INAMI,CNAMTS, INSEE 2013
Home-work commuting - Trinational Eurodistrict Basel
Home-work commuting - Luxemburg borders