Paradoxical Europe

Currently we live a paradoxical situation in the EU. On the one hand, the Commission has just published a Communication boosting growth and cohesion in EU border regions. This is an exercise which is going to be implemented only in EU internal land borders, but it is our aim to extend it to external cross-border regions, maritime ones and other peripheral areas in Europe. Furthermore, the EU institutions have taken on board the consideration of people-to-people projects, very often intangible, but extremely important for a good basement of CBC: trust. CBC is becoming a crucial issue in EU integration. Best EU stories come proximity border collaboration and CB programmes, at the level of the Erasmus Programme, one of the best experiences of integration among European citizens.

The paradox lies in the fact that, on the other hand, situations such as the Brexit in the UK, the current uprising in Catalonia, regular border controls within the Schengen Area and other abnormalities in some EU border regions, remind us that the integration process built in Europe during the last half a century is still weak, and many circumstances around can provoke unexpected, sometimes positive but also negative, effects. We need to refresh our memory periodically, because the natural behaviour across European borders, during many centuries, was conflict. However, in the last six decades (Western) Europe has experienced an enormous process of integration, including the growth of cross-border initiatives and a variety of instruments to get citizens closer where there traditionally was a huge divide. This process is also promoted outside the EU, as it is part of the Neighbourhood Policy, the Pre-Accession Instruments and the Association Agreements with partner countries.

The importance of this very special type of instruments —people-to-people and small-size projects— in deepening the relationship between citizens across national boundaries in many Central European border areas is yet hardly understood in other parts of Europe, which are more central, populated and developed, or in the desks where many of the regulations, programmes and guidelines are drafted, places where the border effect is not notorious. It has been a very unequal and strong struggle for European border and cross-border regions to explain this type of projects to EU authorities, programme managers, etc. However, thanks to an open dialogue with the Commission, the support of the European Committee of the Regions and also the European Parliament (REGI Committee), some strong steps have already been done in order to protect this particular, sometimes peculiar, way of connecting people across the border. Very recently, in July 2017, the European Committee of the Regions has adopted an Own Opinion on people-to-people and small-scale projects in cross-border cooperation programmes, on the initiative of local politicians from cross-border regions. It is very relevant to highlight that the rapporteur has been the vice-mayor of a small border town in the Czech Republic, very active in a Euroregion at the triple Czech-German-Polish border, in the CoR and in the AEBR.

But challenges intensify, these are hard times for European integration and it is also the time to raise awareness about some good news from Europe: integration happens and build European citizenship in a daily basis at border and cross-border areas through the implementation of people-to-people projects. On the other hand, the management of small-project-funds make possible the operation of various cross-border structures in plenty of border areas. It is important to take into account that these structures (Euroregions) are main drivers of integration in their border zones.

Border regions have clearly entered in most political agendas. On 20 September the European Commission has adopted the Communication to the Council and the European Parliament Boosting growth and cohesion in EU border regions, which launches a very interesting set of proposals for concrete action, and acknowledges in its first page the contribution of people-to-people projects to the transformation of border regions, particularly through Interreg. When European Cohesion and its funding is under a big question mark, and the debate is open, all territorial stakeholders have the duty towards border citizens to defend and make more visible the importance of cross-border interventions at all levels in order to keep on healing the scars of history which still spot our continent.

Text prepared for the international social and political magazine "Europe-Center", Publishing House Platinum European Standard, Kiev, Ukraine