On October 9th, 2017, AEuCC participated at the 7th EGTC annual Platform meeting, where the President, Senator Stefano Collina, delivered a presentation with come concrete ideas and proposals.

You can find Senator Collina’s presentation here.

The meeting was opened by newly elected CoR COTER Commission Chair and the new EGTC Coordinator, Mr Petr Osvald who updated the participants on latest developments with the EGTCs and the CoR’s work on the EGTC Platform.

The moderator of the first session was Mr Pavel Branda, chair of the CoR Intrerregional Group on Cross-border cooperation and Rapporteur on the CoR opinion on “People-to-people projects (small projects) in cross-border cooperation programmes” that was adopted earlier this year.

Ms Ana-Paula Laissy, Head of Unit for European cross- border cooperation in European Commission’s DG REGIO, presented the Communication “Boosting Growth and Cohesion in border regions” and the Study on Cross-border obstacles. More about her intervention you can find here.

Ms Anne Sander, Member of the European Parliament, gave an update on the work of the European Parliament and the work of the Cross-border working group that she chairs.

Mr Thiemo W. Eser, Head of Division for International Relations and Territorial Cooperation in Ministry of Sustainable development and Infrastructure of Government of Luxembourg presented the outcomes of a long debate on a potential new tool “European Cross-border Convention” that could compliment the current EGTC legislation. His presentation is available here.

We had an opportunity to learn more about two recent studies, the EGTC Monitoring Report 2016 published by the CoR and presented by Ms Sabine Zillmer from Spatial Foresight whose presentation you can find here. The second study presented was the STOA study on missing transport links which was presented by Ms Daniela Carvalho whose presentation you can find here.

The EGTC Platform, and the first Vice Chair of the COTER Commission, Mr Spyridon Spyros, welcomed the new EGTCs that joined us in late 2015 and 2016. We had an opportunity to hear more about the work of EGTC Pamina (DE-FR-BE) presented by Mr Patrice Harster, EGTC Mura Region (HU-HR) presented by Dr Krisztian Varga, and we learned more about the unique EGTC, the Eucor – The European Campus (CH-FR-DE) which was presented by Mr Janosch Nieden.

During the panel on “Access to EU funding and new opportunities – experiences, issues and solutions” we had the pleasure to welcome many interesting speakers. The panel was opened by Mr Zoltan Bara, Executive Director of EGTC Pons Dabubii, who presented the experiences of a cross-border EGTC in accessing EU funding. Mr Bara’s presentation is available here.

From the European Commission, we had the pleasure to hear more about funding opportunities, presented by Mr Jean-Pierre Halkin, Head of Unit for Macro-regions, Transnational/Inter-regional Cooperation, IPA and Enlargement.

The participants had an opportunity to learn more about the European Investment Bank’s Innovative support for cross-border investments, presented by Mr René-Laurent Ballaguy, Managerial Advisor at the European Investment Bank.

From the last speaker of the panel we heard more about the new EEA and Norway Grants’ Fund for Regional Cooperation, presented by Mr Eivind Lorentzen, Counsellor for Regional and Local Affairs, Representation of Norway to the EU. The call for projects will be launched in December, which could be very interesting for many EGTCs. You can read more about this Fund here.

On request of several EGTCs, the participants discussed the Future of Europe, lead by European Committee of the Regions’ Vice President, Mr Markku Markkula.