158th CoR Plenary Session (29-30 November 2023)

Rapporteur: MAUPERTUIS Marie-Antoinette, Commission: COTER
In this Opinion, the CoR stresses out that cross-border cooperation with neighbouring countries is a key part of EU policy; it helps meet the cohesion, neighbourhood and enlargement objectives in a cross-cutting way. The CoR firmly believes that local and regional authorities (LRAs) play an essential role in cross-border cooperation through knowledge of the geographical and social situation, opportunities, constraints and shared challenges.

With an overall allocation of €79.5 billion, the new Global Europe will cover the EU cooperation with all third countries, except for the pre-accession beneficiaries and the overseas countries and territories from the geographic programmes [...] Global Europe will particularly support countries most in need to overcome long-term developmental challenges and will contribute to achieving the international commitments and objectives that the Union has agreed to, in particular the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement. It merges several current external financing instruments under the EU budget.

In the context of the Commission's proposal for a multiannual financial framework (MFF) for the 2021-2027 period, on 14 June 2018 the Commission published a proposal for a regulation establishing the Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument. Council and Parliament agreed in trilogue negotiations, which ended in March 2021, that Parliament would have an enhanced role in defining the main strategic choices of the instrument, through a delegated act and twice-yearly geopolitical dialogue. The Commission also committed to inform Parliament prior to any use of the 'emerging challenges and priorities cushion', and take its remarks into consideration. Parliament insisted that any activities related to migration had to be in line with the objectives of the instrument, and also secured safeguards on the amounts for capacity-building, election observation missions, local authorities, Erasmus, the Pacific and the Caribbean.

Established in 1990, the first European territorial cooperation initiative, Interreg I, focused on cross-border cooperation. Action in this area has expanded over the years to cover broader initiatives such as trans-national cooperation, involving countries from wider geographical areas, and inter-regional cooperation, which brings together regions from across the whole EU. These three strands together make up European territorial cooperation (ETC), which is one of the two main goals of cohesion policy today and which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. With the removal of many of Europe's frontier posts, travelling freely across borders has become second nature for millions of EU citizens. European territorial cooperation has brought Europeans closer together, strengthened connectivity and improved the natural environment, supported by EU mechanisms such as the European groupings of territorial cooperation, and macro-regional strategies.

Russia's war on Ukraine has caused the European Union (EU) to intensify its work for peace and security. The Peace and Security Outlook, produced by the European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS), seeks to analyse and explain the European Union's contribution to the promotion and restoration of peace and security internationally, through its various external policies. This study provides an overview of the issues and current state of play. It looks first at the concept of peace and the changing nature of the geopolitical environment, as European security faces the most tangible military threat since the end of the Cold War. Linking the study to the Normandy Index, which measures threats to peace and democracy worldwide based on the EU Global Strategy, each chapter of the study analyses a specific threat to peace, and presents an overview of EU action to counter the related risks. The areas discussed include proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, democracy support, conflict prevention and mitigation in fragile contexts, the security impacts of climate change, cyber-attacks, disinformation, and terrorism, among other issues'.

Often isolated, and with generally poorer access to public services, the EU's border regions face a unique set of challenges. This has been recognised under Article 174 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which states that particular attention should be paid to cross border regions when developing action to strengthen the EU's economic, social and territorial cohesion. Yet while the EU has provided significant support for these regions over the years, particularly within the framework of European territorial cooperation, helping to strengthen connectivity and create new growth and jobs, numerous obstacles continue to hamper cross-border cooperation. The Commission's 2015 cross-border review revealed legal and administrative barriers as the main obstacle to cross-border cooperation. In parallel, the 2015 Luxembourg Presidency put forward plans for an EU cross-border mechanism.

This article is a review of regional cross-border coordination and cooperation around the world. Two questions are raised: when trade dominates, does economic or functional interdependency result in cross-border linkages? Second, when politics and institutions mediate cross-border relations, do economic relations intensify? Specifically, do local–central networks of government actors and institutions mediate such processes when they emerge? To investigate those two questions, this work focuses on cross-border relations in various parts of the world primarily focusing of the role trading relations or local–central relations would play in developing cross-border networks spanning an international boundary.

Cross-border cooperation, border regions, soft spaces? This special issue approaches cross-border informal planning processes in cross-border regions by analysing them from a perspective that combines networks, governance and territorialization. Such a relational perspective will be developed by papers which deal with a variety of European cross-border regions and empirical evidence related to the nexus of networks, governance and territorialization.