Committee on Regional Development (REGI)

By Ania Osmańska (PL)

Teamwork makes the dream work: Interreg is a key EU-wide instrument promoting economic and social cross-border collaboration, aiming to reduce economic disparities, foster sustainability and consequently drive regional development. Considering newly arising challenges in Europe, what direction should Interreg take in Flanders-Netherlands and other regions to achieve its outlined goals and stay relevant to European citizens’ needs?

Introduction

According to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), one of the EU’s main objectives of work, and even its existence, is to strengthen its economic, social and territorial cohesion by reducing regional disparities. EU’s cohesion policy, therefore, focuses on ensuring economic, social, and territorial cohesion by identifying and accommodating the needs of EU citizens in its various regions.

Crucially, 30% of EU citizens live in border regions. They often rely on services and amenities from abroad, which often happen to be in closer proximity than alternatives within the borders of their own country. Consequently, cross-border mobility is crucial to their lives and often impacts their employment or healthcare, but sadly is not free from challenges. To ensure the provision of essential services, sustainability, resilience, and a good quality of life across all EU territories, integration between neighbouring Member States is key. Succinctly put, to ensure cohesion in the EU, cross-border cooperation is essential. 

The EU’s main instrument for achieving that is Interreg – a funding scheme aiding cross-border¹, transnational², and interregional programmes³, responding to the specific issues arising across Europe. Currently, it also puts a lot of focus on contemporary challenges like digital transformation and social inclusion. However, considering newly arising challenges in Europe, there are areas that Interreg has not covered yet. With the ongoing climate crisis, the need to move away from Russian fossil fuels, or the housing crisis, is there a direction in which regional cooperation could go?

Territory covered by Interreg cross-border cooperation programmes in 2021-2027 (indicated as orange), Source: DG REGIO 

Actors and Stakeholders

Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG REGIO) is the European Commission’s department proposing and implementing policy concerning the EU’s regions and cities. DG REGIO is in control of EU funds that aid regional projects, such as the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). Moreover, it provides information on national programmes and aims to align regional initiatives with the EU strategy. Since regional development covers a wide array of policy areas, the EU has varying competence in this case. The EU has shared competence⁴ over transport, energy, environment, economic, employment, and social policies. Conversely, it has only supporting competence⁵ over healthcare, culture, and most importantly, administrative cooperation.

National governments of Member States play an important role in this issue as well. They are the ones interpreting and implementing EU policy, while also enforcing their own. Depending on each country, they have varying jurisdiction over regional matters. For example, the Government of the Netherlands enforces the Environmental Management Act, which provides a legal framework for the entire country, outlining the main goals and restrictions concerning the environment.

Local administrative bodies are important stakeholders in this topic. They are the ones closely acquainted with local issues, meanwhile they may not have the resources or jurisdiction to solve them. They can participate in the formation of cooperation programmes, such as Interreg, to widen their impact. In the Netherlands provinces and municipalities take national laws and apply them to their regional contexts, for example managing municipal waste collection, In line with the national Environmental Management Act

Civil society includes non-governmental organisations, foundations, academia, or even individual citizens. Their participation in policy-making and Interreg projects is crucial, as they are the ones who can best indicate areas for improvement, provide feedback, and ultimately will be impacted the most. Such actors based in Utrecht or the Netherlands are the Foundation HIER Klimaatbureau, the Foundation for Applied Water Research, and the HKU University of the Arts.

Key challenges

Sustainability

In the alarming context of ongoing climate and biodiversity crises, it’s easy to get caught up in their global scale, and consequently think of large-scale solutions and omit the fact that specific regions face different challenges when it comes to sustainability.

The climate crisis is also apparent in Utrecht. The city, like many urban areas, is faced with a high risk of flooding and rising mean annual temperatures, which exacerbate health issues connected to heat stress and increase the risk of damage to infrastructure such as roads, or electricity. Meanwhile, the entire province is especially at risk of waterlogging⁶ due to a 30% increase in precipitation over the last century, simultaneously experiencing more frequent droughts in other parts. On a local level, it might be difficult to commit to preventing the climate crisis but adapting to its effects will be crucial for Utrecht as a city, and a province. One of the biggest challenges will be flood management, as a city is at risk of increasingly frequent downpours, with an ageing drainage system and only 21.8% of the city being green. The city had introduced a subsidy for the installation of green roofs that would absorb and retain water, unfortunately, citizens were uneager to engage. Many cities in Europe share the same risk, however not many have been successful in managing it.

With the EU’s objective of becoming climate neutral by 2050, the efforts to carry out the energy transition pose various challenges. Transporting energy between Member States through cross-border networks has become an important topic, as it would contribute to achieving a resilient, stable and secure energy system, by enabling the exchange of energy between Member States, in case of any disruptions or shortages in their own system. Nevertheless, the differences between infrastructure and voltage levels in the electricity systems of Member States pose an issue, and there is a lack of legal provisions that would support the exchange of clean energy between border regions in the EU. Moreover, some national laws may hinder the possibility of establishing such a connection. For example, the Dutch Electricity Act does not permit the Netherlands and Germany to exchange energy and the lack of agreement between the two countries prevents the use of subsidies for a direct connection between the two grids.

Another area important to solving the environmental crises is the protection and restoration of ecosystems. Many of them spread regardless of country borders, which is why they could significantly benefit from cross-border collaboration. As an example, the European otter was extinct in Flanders and the Netherlands, but fortunately, conservation efforts brought back its population in the north of the Netherlands. Now, Flemish and southern Dutch municipalities are using the existing know-how to collaborate on restoring the otters’ habitat that spreads across their border. Instead of restoring fragmented habitats in each country, the biggest challenge, but simultaneously the most important goal is connecting those gaps. This example shows how the exchange of expertise and collaboration between multiple municipalities can improve environmental efforts.  

Cross-border issues

Border regions within the EU house almost 2 million regular cross-border commuters, many of whom are cross-border workers⁷. In 2018 80,000 people living in Germany and Belgium would regularly cross the border to work in the entirety of the Netherlands, venturing even further into the country, reaching Utrecht among other cities. Meanwhile, 9,000 Dutch workers would commute the other way around. Such people face many barriers, namely commuting difficulties, ineligibility for social benefits, inaccessibility of healthcare, non-transferability of education and qualifications, or taxation differences.

In the case of social benefits, it often results in cross-border workers falling in between two systems, such is the case for those caught between the Netherlands and German social welfare systems. German and Dutch child budget benefits are decided based on the residence criterion, meanwhile, many Dutch residents working in Germany would claim the German benefit. However, changes in German law indirectly impacted such workers, making them no longer eligible for benefits on either side of the border. Although the EU has introduced common social security guidelines, its implementation on the national and regional levels remains an issue.

Patient mobility is often crucial for residents of border regions, since access to specialised and high-quality healthcare may be closer in a bordering country than within someone’s own. Many regions face issues regarding varying criteria for healthcare reimbursements, the language barrier, the inflexibility of insurance providers, or the lack of cross-border emergency medical services. The Meuse Rhine region (spreading across the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany) is however an example of well-executed cross-border healthcare collaboration, titled a model of excellence in a report compiled by the Directorate General for Health and Food Safety. They simplified many of the processes that made cross-border healthcare inaccessible, for example, changing how health insurance providers authorise patients without the need for a lengthy administrative process.

Administrative challenges

The plethora of issues listed above most often stem from administrative and structural challenges. One of the main obstacles is the lack of horizontal coordination between responsible bodies, meaning that specific authorities do not make the effort to coordinate their differing systems. Moreover, the variety of administrative bodies on local, regional, and national levels, have differing competencies, sometimes making it impossible to initiate a solution.

Another major administrative challenge is the fact that national and EU legislation is border-blind. The specificity of border regions is not considered when drafting legislation, often resulting in regulations that are unsuitable for the needs of those territories, creating problems outlined above. This makes coordination between border regions and the setup of interregional bodies difficult. Residents of border regions are calling for more flexibility in the implementation of national legislation to better adapt it to their needs.

Relevant Policy

Structure

As stated before, cohesion policy is one of the EU’s main investment areas, accounting for almost a third of its budget (€392 billion) for the years 2021-2027, aiming to achieve 2 of its goals – Investment for Jobs and Growth, as well as European Territorial Cooperation (ETC). Under its umbrella, there are 4 funds that support the economic growth and sustainable development of cities and regions. The European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) is the only fund supporting the ETC goal, which focuses solely on cooperation between regions. Interreg is the key instrument that the European Regional Development Fund uses to achieve the goal of European Territorial Cooperation, amounting to €10 billion for the years 2021-2027. The distinctive characteristic of Interreg is that the programme aims to reap the benefits of interregional cooperation, as opposed to allocating funds on national and regional levels, separately within each country. 

 Where Interreg fits in the EU funding structure, Source: Interreg

How does it work? 

Interreg is an instrument that enables funding of specific programmes that are divided into 4 strands, among others Cross-Border (Interreg A), Transnational (Interreg B), Interregional (Interreg C), and Outermost regions’ (Interreg D) programmes.

Cross-Border programmes (Interreg A) cover the border regions of two neighbouring Member States and have a joint budget of €6.7 billion allocated to projects that aim to alleviate issues troubling citizens and businesses that cross borders on a daily basis, covering 5 most affected policy areas: Labour Market & Education, Social Security & Health, Transport & Mobility, Industry & Trade and Policy Planning and provision of Public Services. One of those programmes is Interreg Flanders-Netherlands, covering the northern, Dutch-speaking part of Belgium and most of the Netherlands. It operates on 4 pillars of a smarter, borderless, greener and more social Europe, and it mostly focuses on aiding projects concerning innovation, sustainability, the labour market, sustainable tourism and tackling border bottlenecks. Each project is carried out by a group of public institutions (such as provinces, municipalities, or their respective departments),  as well as private firms, academic institutions and civil organisations. Some of the past projects included creating guidelines for energy-efficient cooling systems in buildings, improving public transport in a cross-border region, or proposing policy recommendations concerning cross-border energy exchange.

Interreg Flanders-Netherlands’ budget allocation (in Euro) per its 4 pillars, Source:  Interreg Vlandered-Nederland 

Transnational programmes (Interreg B) cover larger regions that are spread across multiple countries and financially support projects that respond to common issues in that area related to innovation, environment, accessibility, telecommunications, and urban development. Interreg North-West Europe covers parts of Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Switzerland, France, and Germany, prioritising the environment, the energy transition, the circular economy, technology, and inclusive society as its objectives. Similarly to Interreg A, the projects are carried out in collaboration between public institutions, private firms, academic institutions, and civil organisations. Some examples of the projects’ results are creating individual strategies to combat energy poverty for specific target groups, reducing the region’s dependency on artificial fertilisers, and supporting small-scale farmers.

Further research

• Easing legal and administrative obstacles in EU border regions
• Public consultation on overcoming cross-border obstacles – Publications Office of the EU 
• More and better cross border services – Obstacles and solutions to cross-border cooperation in the EU 
• Cross-Border Impact Assessment 2023 – Case studies from the Netherlands, Maastricht University 
• B-solutions, solving border obstacles – Publications Office of the EU 

Quiz

Now it’s time for something more interactive! In order for you to better understand the scale of and cause-and-effect relationships between the issues mentioned in this Topic Overview, your task will be to rank them into a Tier-List, assigning them into the following categories:

1. EU-wide challenges
2. National challenges
3. Local challenges
4. Cross-border challenges

Where it is applicable, try to order the issues within each Tier in the order from cause to effect (from top to bottom)

Click this link, and complete the Tier-List. Once you’re done, do a bit of research and think of any other issues that might be missing from the list. Once we see each other in Utrecht, we will use your responses during Committee Work!

1. Cross-border programmes cover regions close to a border of two neighbouring countries, eg. Interreg Flanders-Netherlands, between Belgium and the Netherlands. ↩︎
2. Transnational Programmes cover larger regions that spread across multiple countries, eg. Interreg North-West Europe, covering parts of Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Switzerland, France, and Germany. ↩︎
3. Interregional Programmes cover all EU Member States and create networks between their regions. ↩︎
4. Shared competence means that the EU can implement legally binding acts, while Member States can only act where the EU has not. ↩︎
5. Supporting competence means that the EU can only implement policies that support, coordinate, or complement actions of Member States. The policies cannot require the harmonisation of laws across the entire Union. ↩︎
6. Waterlogging is an occurrence when an excessive amount of water is found in the soil, which often negatively impacts the growth of plants. ↩︎
7. Cross-border workers are people who live in one Member State and work in another, which often means that they receive health insurance, claim social benefits and pay taxes in different countries. ↩︎