Easing legal and administrative obstacles in EU border regions

Project description

Over the last 25 years, EU cohesion policy has played an important role in fostering cross-border cooperation between regions through Interreg programmes. At the same time, the implementation of the Interreg programmes suggests that many border obstacles remain – and that financial support from the Union alone will not solve persistent problems. Many of these are linked to legislation and governance and would thus require administrative and legal steps for better alignment at EU, national, regional and local level in line with the principle of subsidiarity. Thus, the study focuses on the legal and administrative obstacles prevailing at internal land borders of the European Union, including those with Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

General objectives of the project

The overall objective of this contract is to make a policy review of existing legal and administrative obstacles which currently hinder deeper integration between internal land border regions and of how these obstacles could be addressed in the future. 4 specific objectives are:

Objective 1: to establish an inventory of legal and administrative obstacles in border regions through the identification of relevant policy areas and identify roots for the existence of these obstacles;

Objective 2: to identify most relevant policy areas and conduct a number of in-depth, thematic case studies on border obstacles and how they might have been addressed, including examples of past good practices and achievements so far;

Objective 3: as a cross-cutting objective, to contribute to a discussion process between stakeholders, experts and Commission services;

Objective 4: to provide conclusions and policy recommendations in the form of an issues paper, to be presented at the end of the assignment.

This study focuses on internal land borders only. The geographical reference is the NUTS3 regions directly along national borders.

Involvement of CASE

CASE team is participating in several case studies: (1) cross-border mobility of persons, covering such sectors as labour market and education &training; (2) cross-border governance (basic set-up of administrative systems and day-to-day operation of administrations at; Territorial development planning; Planning of sector policies; Status of permanent cross-border cooperation structures and role played in the cross-border governance context different levels); (3) Cross-border citizenship (basic civil rights and basic political rights).

Sponsor: European Commission

Partners: Panteia B.V.; European Association for Information on Local Development (AEIDL); ICF GHK