Medienmitteilung
2. Oktober 2008, Paris
URBACT Project
The URBACT Monitoring Committee meeting, that took place in Ljubljana on September 26th 2008, approved six European Working Groups to continue into the implementation phase of the URBACT II programme 2007/2013. MOT is lead partner of the “EGTC” project “Expertising Governance for Transfrontier Conurbations”, one of these working groups.
The launch conference of the “EGTC” URBACT project is organising in Strasbourg, European Parliament, 19
th of November 2008.What is URBACT ?
URBACT is a European programme which aims to
encourage the sharing of experiences between European cities and to disseminate knowledge on sustainable urban development. The second cycle of the Programme, URBACT II (2007/2013), follows in the footsteps of URBACT I (2002/2006), which successfully rallied 217 cities across Europe to work in 38 different projects.Issues of the “EGTC” URBACT project
The development of cross-border conurbations and the improvement of the quality of life of their inhabitants call for an innovative approach to go beyond national boundaries.
There are cross-border conurbations on many European borders. The main challenge of cooperation for them is to give concrete answers to the needs of the inhabitants in fields such as urban planning, public transport (border worker movements), public services, economic development, environment, health, etc. For this purpose, they may establish cross-border governance tools: setting-up of a common structure in order to lead urban, economic, social and cultural policies on either side of the border, implementing work programmes, etc. To respond to this challenge, the “EGTC” URBACT project aims to enable cross-border conurbations to exchange on innovative governance tools based on a partnership that brings together, on the same territory, the competent authorities necessary to the development of common objectives.
1.
Lille Metropole Communauté Urbaine, FR (for the Eurometropole Lille-Kortrijk-Tournai, France/Belgium)
The City of Slubice, PL (for the Frankfurt on Oder/Slubice conurbation, Germany/Poland)
The City of Chaves, PO ( for the Eurocidade Chaves-verin, Portugal/Spain)
The City of Esztergom, HU (for the Ister-Granum EGTC, Hungary/Slovakia)
The Communauté Urbaine of Strasbourg, FR (for the Eurodistrict Strasbourg-Ortenau, France/Germany)
The Canton of Basel-Stadt, CH (for the Trinational Eurodistrict Basel, Switzerland/Germany/France)
The objectives
The partners will work on the
promotion of innovative governance instruments on a sample of cross-border conurbations in Europe. They will identify the relevant protagonists and analyse how the cross-border conurbations develop joint diagnostics, strategies and organisation plans. The objective is to identify best practices, define a methodology and analyse how the structural funds, other public funding and legal instruments, such as the European grouping of territorial cooperation (EGTC) can be used to help them in their development.The project will give cross-border conurbations in Europe the opportunity to identify
concrete results, success and failure, the causes of such results, and to transfer those good practices into other cross-border conurbations, so as to improve their governance system. Whereas some crossborder agglomerations are quite in advance in this process, other ones, especially from the new Member States, need good practices as models.The
European grouping of territorial cooperation is today the only legal tool allowing multi-level governance including national authorities when necessary. This project will aim to study how it could become a European tool of reference to support governance of cross-border agglomerations.Duration
Further information
On MOT: http://www.espaces-transfrontaliers.eu
Contact:
For registration to the launch conference:
Here you will find the press release as a pdf for download: