Regional Development – Sustainability

The Moselle Valley is one of the great river landscapes of Western Europe, with a unique natural and cultural heritage. The part of the valley that lies on the border between France, Luxembourg and Germany reflects the diversity of the Greater Region through its history and international links. For some years now, the Upper Moselle Valley has been facing the challenge of reconciling the current development dynamics with the preservation of its rural landscape.

In order to meet this challenge and to strengthen the functional cross-border connections between Luxembourg, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland, the ministries responsible for regional planning have developed the Upper Moselle Valley development concept in cooperation with regional and municipal actors on the basis of the guiding principles defined in the EOM concept.

Lille, Strasbourg and Basel are powerful cities situated close to national borders.  Fuelled by economic, political and symbolic functions, their influence creates regions that are both metropolitan and cross-border. Thanks to interviews, cartographic work and textual analyses, this thesis looks at how cross-border metropolitan regions are constructed. This emerges as a process whereby the local actors have to mobilise together and with the European Union to negotiate with the States. This European scale recomposition generates areas subject to tensions where the cross-border conurbation is also part of other, larger regions.

The symbolic role of national borders for cross-border regionalisation remains little-known. In order to broaden our understanding of the meaning-making capacity of borders, this paper looks at what happens when the border is apparently not the object of a symbolisation strategy. The case of Greater Geneva appears particularly informative as this cross-border cooperation seeks to develop an integrated urban agglomeration marked by the ‘erasure’ of the Franco-Swiss border. Rather than an absence of symbolisation, the border is recoded as a ‘planned obsolescence’ through its ‘invisibilization’ in the Genevan borderscape. However, the dissonance between this recoding by cross-border cooperation elites and existing popular imaginations weakens the cooperation project. To the extent that borders are powerful symbols which are intended to stimulate emotions and empathy, the ability to mobilize their meaning-making capacity is at the heart of symbolisation politics, as much for the proponents of open borders and cross-border cooperation as for the reactionary forces that emphasize national interests and ontological insecurity.

In view of the multiple possible interpretations emerging in the public debate, the eminently cross-cutting but also sensitive nature of the topic covered, the publication endeavours first of all to explain the reasons why it would be a good idea to adopt a co-development policy. It attempts to define the objectives it should seek to achieve, the actors that might be involved as well as the possible content through a number of concrete proposals for implementation.

In essence, the report concludes there are two different ways: the first is to give Limburg (or Dutch border provinces in general) a specific role in the application of existing multi- or bilateral instruments at the Benelux or EU level. This could include a vital role related to the EU instrument under debate (cross-border mechanism).

The second option would be the establishment of a specific national legal instrument that would provide the Province of Limburg (or all border provinces) with innovative tools to adapt Dutch legislation in the context of border obstacles.

This article proposes a systematic analysis of the Interreg IV A projects related to cross-border territorial development which were conducted along Europe's internal borders between 2007 and 2013. It reveals the diversity of the initiatives and shows that they can be separated into different categories according to whether they aim to (1) create or improve networks between actors, (2) produce territorial observations, (3) develop strategies or, finally, (4) produce tangible for the public at cross-border level.

Cross-border working is a phenomenon that has concerned a growing number of people in Europe since the beginning of the 2000s. Lorraine, which constitutes a large labour pool and until the recent territorial reform was the only French region with borders with three countries, is concerned by large-scale flows into Luxembourg and to a lesser extent into Germany, and therefore represents a pertinent area to study to identify the geographical and economic dimensions of cross-border working. Cross-border working is analysed as a factor in regulating the job market through its heterogeneity, but also the legal standardisation of the status of the cross-border worker.

The objective of this detailed study on cross-border mobility between France and Belgium and more particularly between the Department of Ardennes and Wallonia was, first of all, to provide the French and Walloon public employment services with knowledge of workers' movements between the border areas of the Department of Ardennes and the provinces of Hainaut, Namur and Luxembourg.

This information was intended to allow actions plans to be drawn up that would be better adapted to the characteristics and specificities of the Ardennes and Walloon employment areas in order to facilitate the geographical and professional mobility of cross-border workers, in terms of both information and advice and assistance, service provision and recruitment.

Accordingly, this work is intended, in an initial stage, to enable local stakeholders and professionals in the employment sector to have  socio-economic analysis of the Ardennes/Hainaut-Namur-Luxembourg cross-border territory, presenting the demographic specificities of the population (age, gender, educational level, level of qualification, socio-professional category, etc.) and the nature of the activity engaged in (salaried employee, employer, type of employment contract, length of contract, branch).

Secondly, the intention is to explore the issues relating to the labour market, in both its border and cross-border dimensions (characteristics, actors, demand, etc.) and in particular the question of the flows of cross-border workers, about which little was known until now on this portion of the Franco-Belgian border. The flows researched correspond to the movements of cross-border workers within the Department of Ardennes and the three Belgian province of Hainaut, Namur and Luxembourg. The cross-border flows into the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg are also presented in a complementary analysis.

The work then addresses the comparative study of the public employment services on either side of the border, looking at the points they have in common and their differences and taking into account the recent changes they have undergone. The question of vocational training, a corollary to the issue of job seeking, is also dealt with.
Finally, the study endeavours to review the situation with regard to the cross-border cooperation initiatives that exist on this segment of the Franco-Belgian border, focusing the analysis on employment-related projects in particular, with their successes and their limitations.