Our Outputs

The final conference of the "EGTC" project was held in Esztergom (Hungary) on 6-7 May 201.

Find in this document the minutes of this final event.

The "Expertising Governance for Transfrontier Conurbations" EGTC URBACT project has completed its programme of exchange and learning activities. Project partners have worked for two years to improve cross-border cooperation between cities, focusing on governance.

The fact sheet of the project final outputs allows you to have an immediate overview of the challenges faced by our project, our conclusions and recommendations as well as the concrete solutions developed by project partners.

The booklet presents in a short communication document the principal results of the project, the lessons learned, the success stories and the main recommandations addressed to EU level.

Contribution of the "EGTC" working group

The present document, the Handbook, aims to provide tools to crossborder territories to assess their cross‐border governance.

Based on the two years of sharing of experiences within the “EGTC” URBACT project, the project partners developed in the Handbook different tools to enable them to assess their own cross‐border governance and to identify key priorities and actions to improve it.

They intended to respond to the following issue:
- Which partnerships to define in order to overcome border‐effects, and
design and implement efficient and legitimate cross‐border policies?
- They developed a methodology (part 1), identified some lessons and some
recommendations of actions (part 2), and good practices among the
partnership (part 3).

After two years of working together, the cross-border agglomerations partners of the project reached some common conclusions, lessons learned on governance of cross‐border agglomerations.

The key question they were willing to respond is as follows:
- which partnerships to define in order to overcome border effects and design and implement efficient and legitimate cross‐border policies?

Assessing common problems and obstacles, identifying some innovative solutions at local level, the EGTC” URBACT project partners identified a range of lessons, proposals they are willing to share with other cross‐border agglomerations and all cross‐border territories in Europe (part 1).

They also pointed out a certain number of recommendations to be taken into
account by regional/national or European authorities, according to the area of
competence and the political organization of the States (centralized or federal) that are concerned, in order to facilitate close cooperation between border cities (part 2).

A synthetic table has been elaborate to highlight the link between the needs of crossborder agglomerations in terms of cross‐border governance and the actions that could be undertaken by them, by the regional/national authorities and European authorities (part 3).

The European Action Plan

The Executive Summary

For improving its own cross-border governance system, each partner has drawn up a Local Action Plan (LAP) that will be used as a tool for improving its partnership system: this document highlights the priorities and eventually the actions to be implemented to pilot in a better manner the cross-border agglomerations.

Download the Local action Plans (English version):

LAP of the Eurodistrict Strasbourg-Ortenau  

LAP of the Ister-Granum EGTC

LAP of Trinational Eurodistrict Basel

LAP of Frankfurt (Oder) - Slubice

LAP of Lille Metropole for the Eurometropole Lille-Kortrijk-Tournai

LAP of the Eurocidade Chaves-Verin

Develop the inhabitants’ feeling of belonging to a cross-border area. Involve civil society within the cross-border public life. Those two questions are fundamental in the construction of cross-border territories and were the heart of the discussion between the 120 participants who assisted to the latest URBACT "EGTC" seminar.

Patrick Peugeot, president of the Forum of the Eurometropole Lille-Kortrijk-Tournai, first opened the seminar with a presentation of this cross-border forum which was created in September 2009. It brings together numerous actors, French and Belgian, from the economic, the social, and the cultural spheres, and associations. The forum also federates the living forces of the territory and is solution-oriented within the strategy of the Eurometropole.

Projects which favour meetings and a common “vivre ensemble”

Various examples of cross-border projects which involve directly the inhabitants from both sides of the border were presented. For example, within the Strasbourg-Ortenau Eurodistrict (Franco-German border), a solidarity run called “solidarity KM” is organized every year in May in order to give the chance to French and German children to meet and run together for a good cause. The Eurocity Chaves-Verin (Spain/Portugal) also presented some cross-border initiatives directly aimed at young people (photography contest, sport meetings…).

Necessity of an active participation and role of the Medias

However, in order to create cross-border communities, involving the inhabitants within the projects is not enough. The presentations have demonstrated the necessity to work for an active participation. Therefore, in order to spark off a larger cultural curiosity, the role of the Medias and the creation of a “cross-border public space” are essential. The example of the “two banks newspaper”  with its 15.000 visitors per day has shown, according to Kai Littmann, director of the newspaper, that the readers’ curiosity for real cross-border subjects (for example the European and Eurodistrict sections) is well alive, and it is fundamental to enable an easy access to information in order to arouse this curiosity.

The example of the cooperation that is led within the Öresund, between Malmö (Sweden) and Copenhagen (Denmark), two cities linked by a bridge since 2000, has demonstrated, following the setting-up of an online forum dedicated to the citizens of the cross-border region, that 99% of them are interested in cross-border cooperation for very practical questions related to their daily lives (job ads, movie time schedule, cultural agenda…). These initiatives are essential in order to arouse a “cross-border community” and a feeling of belonging to it.

The successes of other cross-border Medias going in the same direction were presented as well, such as the example of cross-border French-Belgian TV shows that are broadcasted on local channels.

Involve the civil society within cross-border public policies

To go further, the setting-up of cross-border governance systems (that are more complicated due to their cross-border nature) does not enjoy any direct democratic legitimacy. The gap with the populations might grow bigger. Thus, the third workshop of the seminar dealt with this question: how can the visibility of cross-border public action be insured, and its legitimacy guaranteed? Formal or informal systems of involvement of the socio-economic actors, the numerous examples vary according to the objectives and the socio-cultural contexts of the territories.

For example, within the Frankfurt (Oder)/Slubice conurbation on the German-Polish border, the administrations have organized, in June 2009, a public debate forum as well as working groups that bring together the authorities and the civil society. In the end, one third of the ideas, strategic objectives and projects for a cross-border conurbation come from the civil society.

Another example would be the setting-up of a “civil parliament” in 2006 on the Hungarian-Slovakian border within the Ister-Granum EGTC. It is a place for civil organizations to express their needs and opinions to the experts’ council. This council brings together the executive council of the civil parliament (elected), the representatives of the three main employers of the region, the representatives of the chambers of trade and industry, and the thematic committees of the cross-border EGTC.

Another example within the Trinational Eurodistrict Basel is the creation of an association, “Metrobasel”, which represents the interests of companies, institutions and key actors of the civil society in order to promote the trinational metropolitan region Basel.

The solutions that were brought up to develop participative democracy are still various: develop instruments for cyber democracy, create “cross-border development councils”, increase the number of citizens’ forums and of surveys toward the population, etc.

The baseline study provides a state of the art at European level on the topic of governance of cross-border conurbations and an overview of the situation in each cross-border conurbation involved in the “EGTC” URBACT project. It deepens the understanding that each partner has of the situation in the other partner cities, facilitating the starting of their work. This baseline study has been drafted thanks to an extensive bibliography, good knowledge by MOT of most of the sites involved in the “EGTC” URBACT project, a detailed analysis based on strategic documents, the detailed answers to the questionnaires and meetings organised during site-visits between the lead partner, (with the support of the lead expert), and local stakeholders (technicians and politicians).

EGTC Baseline Study

At a time when a number of cross-border territories are considering and planning the establishment of an EGTC to structure their cooperation (for example, in January 2008 the Lille-Kortrijk-Tournai Eurometropolis established the first EGTC in Europe), this publication of some twenty pages is a practical tool for project stakeholders. It compares this new instrument to the existing frameworks and instruments and describes the advances and the specific features of the EGTC. A section covers “The EGTC in practice”: Why establish an EGTC? What are the applications of an EGTC? How is an EGTC set up? Lastly, four field experiences are highlighted: the Lille-Kortrijk-Tournai Eurometropolis, the German-Polish Pro Europa Viadrina Euroregion, the Capcir and Cerdagne cross-border hospital project (French-Spanish border) and the MATRIOSCA transnational project.