Brussels, 22/09/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 22 September, the European Commission announced the launch of an extensive public consultation regarding the cross-border Interreg cooperation programme. This consultation will attempt to work out what legal and administrative barriers still remain.
This announcement was made during European Cooperation Day, which highlights the practical accomplishments made with cross-border projects and follows the 25th anniversary of Interreg (see EUROPE 11389). The public consultation will run until 21 December and will affect almost 185 million European citizens living in cross-border regions, including cross-border regions in Switzerland and Norway. The conclusions will be made at the beginning of next year.
This consultation is a crucial part of the comprehensive assessment of regional cooperation policy. In July, a scientific study began in an effort to look at all the possible measures that could be used to tackle legal and administrative barriers in cross-border regions. The results are expected to be published at the beginning of 2017. Over the same period, many different workshops and conferences will be organised by the Commission, together with representatives from civil society, cross-border regional associations, entrepreneurs, researchers and university academics.
In this connection, the Commissioner for Regional Policy, Corina Cretu, stated: “In the course of this mandate the Commission intends to make concrete proposals to solve remaining cross border issues and for this, we need the valuable input of the citizens who are facing these obstacles on a daily basis”.
On the same day, senior officials from the Regional and Urban Policy Directorate General Cabinet were involved in field operations to collect information and promote the programme. They will be involved in this task until the middle of October and will visit 11 European cross-border regions.
At the beginning of the month, the Luxembourg Presidency made a presentation to the Committee of the Regions Bureau in which it highlighted a project that sought to facilitate cross-border cooperation. This project, however, was given a rather cool reception by members of the CoR (see EUROPE 11380). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)