We continue to inform you about cross-border cooperation within the UCORD Project

This period marked the introduction of the first elements of the legal framework for the CBC regulation.

In 1980, the Council of Europe adopted the Outline Convention on Transfrontier Co-operation between Territorial Communities or Authorities (the Madrid Convention).

It defined the concept for the first time and encouraged local authorities to sign relevant cooperation agreements within the scope of their powers.

The next important step in establishing the CBC legal framework was the adoption of the European Charter of Local Self-Government in 1985.

It provides that ‘local authorities shall, within the limits of the law, have full discretion to exercise their initiative with regard to any matter which is not excluded from their competence’ and ‘shall be entitled, under such conditions as may be provided for by the law, to co-operate with their counterparts in other States’.

Therefore, the document created legal grounds for local authorities to engage in cross-border cooperation and be recognised as cooperation entities independent of central authorities.

Apart from that, the processes of European integration, which had previously developed independently of cross-border cooperation and used other tools, started to become closely intertwined with the cooperation between regions of neighbouring countries across borders in the 1980s.

Specifically, in its efforts to establish a single market within the EU (then the EEC), the European Commission first recognised the role of border regions as ‘laboratories’ of European integration, since they are the first to experience all positive consequences and shocks from EU enlargement.

These processes laid the foundations for cross-border cooperation within the EU to extend beyond its internal borders.

It was the introduction of relevant legislation and the extension of the CBC to the EU’s external borders that paved the way for new forms of cooperation and the first assistance programmes during the next phase of the CBC evolution, as you will learn from our forthcoming posts.  

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/regional_policy/policy/cooperation/european-territorial/survey-2020_en

in the Council of Europe’s legislative documents: https://rm.coe.int/1680078b0c  

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.