The Mission Opérationnelle Transfrontalière (MOT) organised the 3^rd Borders Forum in Paris on 2 and 3 December, 2024. The panels and presentations addressed a potential European Cross-Border Deal, which, similarly to the Green Deal and the Industrial Deal, is designed to put borders and cross-border cooperation at the forefront of European policies.

Christian Dupessey, Mayor of Annemasse, and President of the MOT, welcomed the participants from all over Europe. In his welcoming speech encouraged the stakeholders to create the framework for the deal through which the living conditions of nearly 140 million EU citizens can be improved. The keynote speaker, Maria-Varinia Michalun, Head of Unit of the OECD joined the initiative by promoting the horizontal inclusion of the cross-border aspect in every European policy.

The first plenary round table focused on the evolution of the cross-border demos and the role of ethnic minorities in this process. The participants, Tibor Navracsis, Minister of Public Administration and Regional Development of Hungary, Karl-Heinz Lambertz, president of the Association of European Border Regions, and Elisa Bertò, Representative of Trentino in the General Secretariat of the Euregio Tyrol-South-Tyrol-Trentino EGTC approached the issue from different points of view along the questions put on by Jean Peyrony, director general of the MOT. Every speaker underlined the troublesome past of interethnic conflicts which has been exceeded with the help of the European integration across the borders. Today, even the emergence of a cross-border identity is possible as a result of permanent interactions.

The second plenary round-table revolved around the question of territorial sovereignty which needs to be shared with the neighbours for a better aligned European cross-border deal. Paco Boya, Secretary General for Demographic Challenge at the Ministry of Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge of Spain concentrated on the Pyrenees whose ecological values cannot be saved without a joint French-Spanish vision. Marie-Antoinette Maupertuis, President of the Assembly of Corsica criticised the neglect of the maritime borders in EU policies which have their specificities. Cecilia Braun, Director of the International Alliance for the Rhine-Alpine Corridor EGTC pointed at the challenges to the integrated development of a transport corridor crossing six countries equipped with diverse technical standards and legal frames. Wiktor Szydarowski, Director of the ESPON EGTC spoke about the recent changes in the world where the geography of spaces has been replaced by the geography of flows overwriting the traditional sovereignist discourse of territories. In his opinion, the place-based approach can be considered as an example of spatial experimentation reaching beyond the national confines. Both round-tables were commented on by the philosopher Gabrielle Halpern who developed the concept of ‘hybridisation’ referring to the border phenomenon where a third entity evolves from the merge of two different entities.

The topic of the CB deal has been detailed in 9 parallel workshops on the second day addressing diverse themes from urban planning to ecological planning, from public services to citizen participation, and issues like cross-border health care, water management and public transport. One of the workshops discussed the topic of enlargement and eastern borders. The workshop was organised and moderated by the representatives of the ESPON EGTC (Nicolas Rossignol, deputy director) and CESCI (Gyula Ocskay, secretary-general). The presentations were given by of Kirsi Vainio, Vice-Mayor of the Region of South-Karelia (Finland), Krzysztof Szpakowski, Chief Specialist and Programme Manager at the Ministry of Development Funds and Regional Policy (Poland), Sanda Šimič, Assistant Minister at the Ministry of European Integration (Serbia), and Andrea Szabóné Cap, Director of the Hungarian-Ukrainian Tisza EGTC. The outcomes of the workshops were presented by the workshop rapporteurs and commented on at the closing plenary session by Juliane Seifert, State Secretary of the Federal Ministry for the Interior and the Community of Germany, Sandro Gozi, Member of the European Parliament and Philippe Voiry, Ambassador for Intergovernmental Commissions, Cooperation and Border Issues at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of France.

Besides the main discourse on the cross-border deal, Ricardo Ferreira (Coordinator of the Border Focal Point at the European Commission, DG REGIO) and Matteo Berzi (Spatial and Policy Analyst at the Joint Research Centre) launched the ACROSS platform giving a comprehensive and well-illustrated overview on cross-border cooperation within the EU. The platform will facilitate the exchange of best practices and the networking of those stakeholders interested the most in a European Cross-Border Deal.