Cross-border cooperation improves public services in lagging regions

Pavel Branda

Around one-third of EU citizens live and work in Europe's border regions, where they face unique challenges related to finding and commuting to jobs, dealing with cross-border administrative challenges, and often accessing public services. Partly due to these challenges, many border regions, which cover 40% of EU territory, lag behind central and capital regions in socio-economic development. This leads to emigration to more prosperous regions and further undermines the sustainable provision of high-quality public services.

Cross-border cooperation and providing public services in a cross-border manner hold significant promise for enhancing accessibility to public services in such regions. Enabling citizens to access educational, healthcare and emergency services, among others, across the border can make a striking difference in the quality of life. It can also reverse negative demographic trends by increasing the attractiveness to move to and settle in such regions.

For example, many less-developed regions across the EU battle with a shortage of medical staff, particularly specialists. In such cases, cross-border healthcare agreements, where regions collaborate across the border to provide citizens with better healthcare services, can make a substantial difference. The same goes for education and workforce development, where joint programmes of universities and technical schools can create new opportunities for growth and transform territorial development.

On many EU borders, ambulances cannot cross the border, despite the life-threatening nature of the situation, patients cannot go to the nearest hospital as it is across the border

Other areas in which cross-border public services can be developed include environmental protection (joint management of protected areas), social care, communal services (waste management), water and energy supply, and tourism, among others. A very specific area that enables cross-border interactions is public transport. For example, in my Euroregion (Neisse-Nisa-Nysa (DE/CZ/PL)), we launched a single ticket (EURO-NISA-Ticket+) many years ago, which enables citizens and tourists to travel by public transport (including city transport) on all three sides of the border.

//Görlitz StadtzentrumFoto: TMGS/Fouad Vollmer Werbeagentur Vorheriges 12 Bild // image taken from https://www.euroregion-neisse.de/

Furthermore, there is a particularly urgent need to solve obstacles to cross-border cooperation in emergency services. On many EU borders, ambulances cannot cross the border, despite the life-threatening nature of the situation, patients cannot go to the nearest hospital as it is across the border in another Member State, and firefighters are unable to communicate as they use different radio frequencies. It is promising that such issues are acknowledged by EU institutions, with the European Commission recently publishing a study on the topic and the European Committee of the Regions currently drafting an opinion focused on solving these issues, but political action is also needed to solve these potentially life-threatening obstacles in border regions.

Given the European nature of such issues, the EU should play an active role in creating the right conditions for the provision of cross-border public services, in collaboration with national, regional and local authorities who are on the ground dealing with the practical implementation.

A successful delivery of cross-border public services requires three conditions: a legal framework, permanent structures, and financing. Currently, the EU lacks a clear legal framework to allow for the efficient establishment and management of cross-border public services. Such a framework would represent a significant EU added value. Unfortunately, the amended proposal for a mechanism to resolve legal and administrative obstacles in a cross-border context is facing opposition in the Council.

Interreg programme's cross-border cooperation strand, continues to bring significant added value for border regions and facilitates the provision of cross-border public services on many EU borders

On the other hand, while the legal framework is pending, Member States and border regions should still seek to establish appropriate cross-border structures or bodies, such as Euroregions, promoting the fluent development of cross-border public services. The European Groupings of Territorial Cooperation can and are a useful instrument in this field. On the financing side, the EU's Cohesion Policy and, more specifically, its Interreg programme's cross-border cooperation strand, continues to bring significant added value for border regions and facilitates the provision of cross-border public services on many EU borders. After the COVID-19 border closures, the need to invest in cross-border cooperation via Interreg programmes is perhaps higher than ever, and it is essential that the allocations for this are not reduced in the next 7-year budget.

Lastly, it is also vital to acknowledge the role of the private sector, as in many Member States and regions, public service provision, including in healthcare, is managed successfully via public-private partnerships. Private companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, unfortunately, still face significant cross-border administrative obstacles, discouraging them from expanding their service provision across Member State borders. As a sign of hope, Member States and European institutions have recently turned their attention to lowering the regulatory burden and strengthening the Single Market, with the Letta Report on the future of the Single Market and the Draghi Report on strengthening the competitiveness of the EU, being published this year. However, enabling our businesses to offer their services in all regions of the EU depends on political decisions at all levels: local, regional, national and European.

Cross-border cooperation represents perhaps the greatest untapped potential in the EU, and lagging regions should more actively turn towards their neighbours across the border to secure the availability of high-quality public services for citizens. After all, cooperation across borders forms the core of our European Union.

Pavel Branda, deputy mayor of the Czech city of Rádlo and CoR's rapporteur on Solving obstacles to the cooperation of emergency services in the EU's border regions.