The future of cross-border cooperation and mobility. Horizontal integration and beyond

The Transfrontier Euro-Institute Network (TEIN) held its annual conference on 26 and 27 September 2024 in Maastricht with the support of the Borders in Globalization (BIG) project on the premises of the European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA). The topic of the conference was given by Joachim Beck’s concept of horizontal integration considered a solution for European cohesion.

The participants were greeted by Wim Hillenaar, the Mayor of Maastricht, Marco Ongaro, the director of the EIPA, Anne Thevenet, coordinator of the TEIN network, Emmanuelle Brunet Jailly, professor of the University of Victoria (coordinator of the BIG project), and Anouk Bollen, director of the hosting organisation, the Institute for Transnational and Euregional Cross-Border Cooperation and Mobility (ITEM) of the Maastricht University. The keynote speaker was Ricardo Ferreira representing the European Commission who summarised what can be known on the future of Cohesion Policy in the light of the Multiannual Financial Framework being prepared.

The participants of the subsequent round-table discussion, Karl-Heinz Lambertz, president of the Association of European Border Regions, Bram de Kort, programme manager of the Flanders – the Netherlands Interreg CBC programme, and Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly, nuanced Mr Ferreira’s picture from different points of view. Mr Lambertz presented the work and the results of the high-level group designing the future of Cohesion Policy and highlighted that the logic of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) should not be adapted to Cohesion Policy because it was designed to respond to a crisis. Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly supported this view because in his opinion it is not important to link remarkable results to Cohesion Policy: the most important is that it exists. Bram de Koort insisted on the utilisation of mechanisms and tools to eliminate cross-border obstacles to enhance cross-border cohesion.

The next panel was dedicated to the solution proposed by the Commission to eliminate cross-border legal and administrative obstacles (the FCBS proposal) which is the topic of the annual territorial impact assessment exercise of ITEM. The discussant (Gyula Ocskay, secretary general of CESCI; Joanna Kurowska-Pysz, researcher of the Polish WSB University, and Clarisse Klauber, expert of the Euro-Institut of Kehl) presented the potential added value of the planned tool in different cross-border contexts: the suburban region of Bratislava, the Polish-Czech-German and the French-German borders. Their joint message was that without appropriate authorisation of the planned new institutions (the so-called Cross-Border Coordination Points) and the willingness of the national authorities, the obstacles cannot be overcome.

Gennard Stulens from the Euroregional Office of Information and Expertise Centre (Belgian Limbourg) and Vincent Pijnenburg representing the University of Venlo (the Netherlands) represented a practical approach to cross-border cohesion. Birte Wassenberg (University of Strasbourg), Bernard Reitel (Artois University) and Pim Mertens (ITEM) presented the first results of the B-Shapes project focusing on the impacts of the changing European political discourse on cross-border integration.

The second day started with professor Hildegard Schneider’s speech on the history of the sometime-divided Maastricht and continued with a keynote from Sebastien Gröning-von Thüna, head of department of the German Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs who spoke about the latest achievements of Germany in facilitating cross-border integration.  The presentations were followed by lively debates and exchanges.

The researchers of the second day coming from 10 different countries discussed varied topics in four workshops, like cross-border health, culture, crisis management, governance, obstacle management, etc. On behalf of the UPS-CESCI Research Group on Cross-Border Cooperation, Zsuzsanna Fejes, associate professor of the Ludovika University of Public Service and president of CESCI presented the legal frames for cross-border cooperation in Hungary along with the different layers of the government.

The next TEIN conference will take place in 2025 in Catalonia, at the University of Girona which must attract numerous researchers after the success of the Maastricht event.