The Institute for Transnational and Euregional cross border cooperation and Mobility (ITEM) of the Maastricht University held its 10^th anniversary event in Ghent in the promises of the provincial government in the presence of notabilities like the ambassadors of the two countries, governors and ministers of the Flemish Region and the Netherlands. CESCI was represented by the secretary general.

ITEM was established in 2014 and since that time it has become an influential think-tank of the Netherlands, the Benelux and the European Union, especially thanks to the territorial impact assessment methodology developed by the team. The methodology is widely applied in the Belgian-Dutch context with the involvement of the relevant authorities.

The event started in the Museum of Fine Arts of Ghent with a guided tour and a festive dinner on the eve of the conference, on 21 November. The audience of the conference on the following day was greeted by Ms Carina Van Cauter, Governor of the Province East-Flanders, Kurt Moens, executive member of the same province and Anouk Bollen, Director of ITEM. The speakers highlighted the necessity of an approach of 360 degrees in each policy field, they stood against the centralisation of the Interreg programmes and promoted the tools developed by ITEM.

The keynotes were Birte Wassenberg professor of contemporary history at the University of Strasbourg and Martin Unfried, senior researcher of ITEM. Mrs Wassenberg gave an overview of the evolution of cross-border cooperation in Europe which started with diverse bottom-up initiatives standardised and dynamised by EU tools like Interreg (funding) and EGTC (governance). Today, there is a need to eliminate cross-border obstacles generating difficulties for CBC. Mr Unfried joined the first speaker through the presentation of the four-dimensional model of territorial cooperation including funding, governance, legal instruments and impact assessment where ITEM created real added value. He insisted on horizontal European integration which was echoed several times during the event.

Besides, speakers blamed the re-introduction of control at the Schengen borders and urged stricter control along the external EU borders; drew attention to the differences in multi-level governance between the Member States which implies different national approaches; promoted the application of the cross-border perspective horizontally (in every EU policy), etc. Pim Mertens, scientific coordinator of ITEM compared the Letta and the Draghi reports underlying the potential negative territorial effects of the EU policies promoting competitiveness. In his opinion, it is paradoxical that stronger EU integration does not necessarily mean stronger cross-border integration which highlights the priority for place-based interventions.

Secretary General of CESCI, Gyula Ocskay took part in the panel focusing on the TIA study of ITEM on the draft EU regulation on a cross-border facilitation tool (FCBS), together with Susanne Sivonen, researcher of ITEM and Maarten Vidal, coordinator of cross-border cooperation at the Flemish Government. Mr Ocskay summarised TEIN’s paper on the role of Interreg in peacebuilding, the creation of democratic governance, the promotion of cohesion and Single Market, and its contribution to the EUisation of the neighbouring and candidate countries. Susanna Sivonen presented the ITEM TIA study which includes, among others, the case study on the cross-border metropolitan zone of Bratislava, drafted by the team of CESCI.

We wish further successful decades to a key item of European cross-border cooperation machinery!