Report published by CoR on the Public Consultations on the Future of CBC
Policy-making | 03 May 2021
As CESCI reported before, the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) launched a public consultation on the joint vision of the long-term future of cross-border cooperation in the European Union. The consultation has been open between December 2020 and the 14th of March 2021 based on which a report has been published in the CoR’s website and is available here.
The report analyses the 338 responses from regional and local administrations, associations and businesses from nearly all the Member States as well as other non-EU countries in order to evaluate to what extent different border regions are affected by obstacles and sets out recommendations for the future of cross-border cooperation based on the participants’ opinions.
Key points of the report:
- Cross-border transport and connectivity remain to be the biggest obstacles in Europe’s border regions. A joint development strategy of cross-border transport infrastructure and green mobility strategies could pave the way to solving these obstacles in border regions.
- Conflicts between national legislations of neighbouring countries are another significant obstacle to cross-border cooperation. National governments should take into account the needs and advantages of border regions and the cross-border territories that include territories of neighbouring states.
- Concerning the INTERREG programmes – the European Union, and more notably the Member States should work on making rules and procedures less complicated and on reducing the implementation time, as this poses challenges to cross-border cooperation.
- Local and regional authorities should be given more powers to address and to remove legal and administrative obstacles that burden cross-border cooperation in their regions.
- Each citizen should have access to the public services across the border, even in cases of future crises that could lead to limitations of freedom of movement.
- The recognition of documents and qualifications, such as diplomas or citizenship certificates, remains an important barrier to citizens living and working in border areas. For this reason, all such documents should be fully standardised and issued in a common digital EU form.
- The languages spoken in the border region should be taught in each side of the border to ensure that citizens have the possibility to learn and better understand their neighbours.
- The economy of border areas needs a cross-border strategy on economic development to see a potential increase in GDP in these border regions.
- The emergency services must be deployable on both sides of the border to manage Europewide crises. Public authorities should set up operational framework agreements between border regions to protect access to healthcare and other important cross-border public services in exceptional border closure cases. The European Union should be given additional competence to manage Europe-wide crises in the future.
- There is a common support for strengthening of the European Committee of the Regions allocating it with more powers, especially when it comes to cross-border-related issues.
Based on the feedback received the CoR will adopt a Resolution at the July 2021 plenary. The Resolution will present concrete proposals for the future of cross-border cooperation and represent the official contribution of the CoR, and the European Cross-Border Citizens’ Alliance, members to the Conference on the Future of Europe. You can read more about the Cross-Border Citizens’ Alliance here: https://cor.europa.eu/en/engage/Pages/cross-border-alliance.aspx
