May 22, 2026
Today, we’re going to talk about the 1990s. This was one of the most eventful periods for the CBC development, as the subsequent establishment of a monetary union and the introduction of a single currency increased mobility, which is one of the key foundations of cross-border cooperation.
In the 1990s, two Additional Protocols to the European Outline Convention on Transfrontier Cooperation between Territorial Communities or Authorities were adopted. They allowed communities or regions to establish organisations or institutions that would operate under the jurisdiction of one of the parties to the Protocol and set the foundations of interterritorial cooperation, fostering interaction beyond the boundaries of neighbouring countries.
During this period, Euroregions also began to be established along the EU’s eastern borders, including with the participation of third countries.
In 1990, the EU launched the INTERREG programme to support CBC, which was also extended to third countries. Due to substantial financial support, it eventually expanded cross-border cooperation from collaboration between regions of two or three neighbouring countries to cooperation in the framework of macroregions.
Efforts of the EU to secure the implementation of the right to freedom of movement for its residents, including the free movement of labour, have contributed to the creation of a network of regional employment services (EURES). The network operates as an agency offering a database of vacancies, labour and accommodation conditions, and tools for searching for a job in the EU, the European Economic Area, and Switzerland. In the wake of this, the first cross-border EURES partnership, EURESChannel, was formally established in 1993.
All these changes and achievements in the CBC legal, institutional, and financial frameworks have contributed to combining specific advantages of economically diverse regions in a single location, leading to yet another form of cooperation between regions across borders – industrial cooperation. 1991 marked a start to a procedure of creating the first cross-border industrial park (Access Industrial Park).
And in the late 1990s, cross-border clusters emerged as another CBC industrial form. The first of them, Bio Valley and Medicon Valley, were formed in 1997. Both operate in the pharmaceutical and medical technology sectors.
You can find out more about the CBC in Europe:
on the European Commission’s website
https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/policy/cooperation/european-territorial/cross-border_en
https://ec.europa.eu/futurium/en/system/files/ged/interreg_25years_en.pdf
in the Council of Europe’s legislative documents:
https://rm.coe.int/1680078b0c
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A31993D0569
The project is part of the Regional Future programme, which is funded by the Swiss-Ukrainian project Ukraine’s Cohesion and Regional Development (UCORD) and implemented by NIRAS Sweden AB with the support of Switzerland.