Proposal for an EU Regulation ‘Facilitating cross-border solutions’ – Cross-Border effects across European cross-border regions: ITEM-TEIN joint study

On 12 December 2023, the European Commission published their amended proposal for a ‘Regulation on Facilitating Cross-Border Solutions' (hereinafter: the FCBS Regulation). The FCBS Regulation proposes that Member States set up Cross-border Coordination Points (CBCPs) which would assess border obstacles and act as a ‘liaison’ between border stakeholders and national authorities. The Member States would then have an option to apply a ‘Cross-border Facilitation tool’, a voluntary procedure designed to resolve administrative and legal obstacles in cross-border regions. The decision whether to resolve a border obstacle remains the prerogative of the competent national authorities. Several cross-border regions may already know of similar practises on addressing and solving border obstacles. On the EU level, for instance, the b-solutions project already provides a tool and funding for stakeholders to have experts advising solutions for cross-border obstacles. However, on a Member State and regional level there are differences on existing tools and structures for such obstacles. Some countries already have collaborations and structures, others do not yet. The existing structures may also exist only for certain land borders but not to all borders of a given Member State. Therefore several questions arise as follows: How does the impact of the proposed FCBS Regulation differ between cross-border regions? What does the EU proposal add to the existing practises? Does the FCBS Regulation provide more positive outcomes for some regions than others? Together with TEIN partners, this dossier examines these questions across four different cross-border regions in Europe: the Benelux-Germany, France-Germany, Euroregion Nisa Neisse-Nysa-Nisa (the Czech and the Polish part), and Austrian and Hungarian suburban region of Bratislava.