Talking about b-solutions is a privilege for us. About six years ago, we started discussing with the European Commission how we could provide solutions to certain problems related to the implementation of cross-border projects.

The question then was what kind of problems.

Whenever you have a cross-border project, if you really want to go into depth, you enter the realm of state sovereignty and so on. Even with the single market, European integration and so on, the system is not prepared for regional authorities or large companies to be able to support cross-border projects, build hospitals on the other side of the border and so on. Well, we have done it because it is essential. If we have done it, it means you can do almost anything. If you can have a cross-border hospital, you can do anything you want.

The problem is that the system is not ready. Even some Member States are not satisfied with opening all the doors. We must keep some doors closed because we have not overcome the system of the national state. These are big words, of course, but we have convinced Europeans to rethink that European integration will be a reality the day the national state plays less of a role. Most decisions are still in their hands, which is reasonable and has to do with the constitutions of each state, but it was very difficult for us to explain certain issues, such as the European cross-border mechanism. In short, everything, including the discussions on this issue, started with the Luxembourg Presidency in 2015. The idea was to set up a mechanism to remove these legal and administrative obstacles. The MOT led a working group on this issue with the French and Luxembourg governments. Things went so well that in 2018, the Commission presented a regulation on the European and cross-border mechanism. Everything was going well until we got to the Council. There were a few member states that were totally in favour, a few member states that were against and most member states did not care or did not understand what was going on. The result was that it was stopped at Council level in 2021. So, it was dormant and if you ask the Council, the mechanism was dead.

This year the European Parliament started to work and in its September resolution it asked the Commission to re-examine it and to start the negotiation process with the Council. Yesterday, at the end of the session, we learned that the Commission had adopted a regulation, which now must be submitted to the Council and then to Parliament. I read it and it seemed a bit simpler than it was because there were some problems for the Member States to understand the nature of it, i.e. whether it was voluntary or not, whether it was going to push them to do this or that, and so on. There are no major differences in the substance of the mechanism, but I think it is much better explained and there has been a lot of learning over these eight years, particularly during the negotiations. There are no major differences in the substance of the mechanism, but I think it is much better explained and there has been a lot of education over the last eight years, particularly over the last three or four years.

There are also arguments because some Member States say that we do not need such European rules for a few problems at the borders. But what happens at borders is not just a problem, it is very serious. But if we want to provide cross-border public services, if we want citizens living on the border to have the same rights as those living further inland, if we want to keep the population, especially young talent, in border regions, and even if we want to attract investment, it must be attractive, and to be attractive we must remove the obstacles.

As usual, society moves much faster than politics, and citizens on the other side of the border have made a great leap forward and are now demanding services. I think it is fair to say that b-solutions do not solve problems in the way that a European legal mechanism would, but it is true that it has shown in recent years that there are a lot of obstacles to overcome. B-solution is not about finding a plan B, but a plan for borders. It is important to explain this because it is not about an alternative to something, but about solving the real problems that people face every day, whether they are correspondents, commuters, students crossing the border to study on the other side, or businesses. To have a 360-degree view of everything that is going on in your life, even if you have a national border, you must solve a lot of these obstacles, and the solutions have identified some of them.

This is the result of the 2017 Committee Communication, and there are others, but this is the one that was assigned to us as part of our tasks as an association of European border regions, of course in cooperation with our colleagues. We needed experts, especially legal experts in the field of law from two border countries. We have a lot of cross-border experts and a lot of legal experts, but it is not easy to find legal experts who really know what is going on both sides of the border and who have a good knowledge of the language, but above all the law. In the end, we have a list of the usual experts, but since we have been implementing b-solutions since 2018, there have been students in certain legal departments who have subsequently become experts. So, it is a very interesting process of training and, at the same time, building the capacity of local and regional authorities. Some students came to us and said “we had a problem, but we did not know” because they did not know their rights. Sometimes citizens and even authorities are not aware of the possibilities offered by European law and the different regulations.

So, I would like to show you the background to our association, the process and the results, the documents you can already read and be inspired by, and so on. Here is the favourite phrase of our President Karl-Heinz Lamberts: “We want to overcome borders, but first you have to be allowed to cooperate, you have to want to cooperate and you have to be able to do it.” You must have the capacity, the political will, and the permission to cooperate. It is a question of being allowed, of being able to close the border with a project, a service or something else. In this sense, b-solutions started in 2018 for a period of two years to identify certain obstacles, legal and administrative, and to try to find solutions to illustrate the existence of these obstacles. Indeed, I would like to stress that for some Member States there are no obstacles.

The Commission was very satisfied with the first result, even though it did not go as planned. First, we tried to give the region that had identified its obstacle 15 months to remove it on its own, as if it were a kind of pilot action.

But we only got 10 quality projects out of the 20 we were aiming for. So, we changed the system completely. We put out an open call to a border authority or a cross-border structure that could very easily identify the obstacle, the problem behind the obstacle, the definition of the obstacle, and so on. Then we assigned an expert for a period of three months to work on the project. Then we assigned an expert for a period to look at the legislation on both sides, the procedures, to talk to the stakeholders and to write a report. It was not very ambitious. The idea was not to give money to the expert to come back with a solution that could be implemented. That is not realistic. But to describe the obstacle, to do this pedagogical exercise of understanding obstacles, to understand better the cooperation and the possibilities that cooperation opens, to know if we can do this, but we cannot do that because of this legal or administrative obstacle.

Once identified, the obstacle must be defined and then we must try to prepare a solution. In some cases, the solution may be that the obstacle does not exist, but that stakeholders are not aware of the European regulation that could be implemented. Member States also have the option of implementing the same regulation in a different way. Sometimes, therefore, the problem arises from different ways of implementing the same regulation. In other cases, it is simply a question of asymmetry. On the one hand you have the national state and on the other hand you have the region or municipality, and the regulations do not match. In some cases, it is simply a matter of language. If you are on the other side of the border and you do not speak the language, you cannot interact, you cannot look for a job, you cannot look for workers or whatever. In other cases, there is a clear conflict between the two sets of rules. You have fought for the borders of the state, but you have not fought for the citizens who are in the interstate space and who cross the border. This is where the problem arises at European level, because there is not enough European legislation, and this is something that the Commission should do. If it is a lack of knowledge, then we need to educate, but in most cases, it is a lack of awareness.

In the first part of the b-solutions between 2018 and 2021, we have identified, selected, monitored, and prepared 90 cases. For the period 2022-2024, we plan to have 120 more. Now we have about 65. In the first part, the champion was France, followed, not surprisingly, by Spain and then the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, the usual suspects, Romania very few, Bulgaria one case, Poland one or two. We are now concentrating on regions where there are no obstacles. But there is still a lot to do. The obstacles are still there. That is another story that would take another hour to tell.

During this second period, we are also trying to implement some of the solutions that we have proposed, because initially the solutions were just proposed, but then what? We thought the stakeholders would accept them and fight for them, but that is not always the case. So, we must provide proactive support, mainly through workshops where we invite the different authorities involved in the two legislations and explain the benefits of a solution. In most cases it will be a bilateral agreement or something like that, because we do not have a cross-border mechanism to stop the implementation of assets and regulations in one part of the territory to make life easier for citizens. It is very easy to say, but very difficult to do. Perhaps in a year’s time we will have a cross-border mechanism, and then b-solution will be what it is: a means of identifying clear cases where the conflict exists.

So, you can see that the aim is to find solutions, but also to try to make innovative proposals to increase the exchange of information and to ensure that each of these cases can be reproduced at other borders. Very often the obstacle is repeated with different rules, but at the end of the day the result is the same: citizens in border regions do not have the opportunity to do things that are normal for those who live in more central regions. We have always found that most of the obstacles are related to the labour market, education and even languages. Yesterday we talked about Latin America. Language is not a problem there because Portuguese and Spanish are very easy to understand. Here in Europe, it is a different story. If we look at the different categories of barriers, namely legal and administrative barriers, that is why b-solutions have been implemented. We have located the cases in different parts of Europe and there is a concentration in several border areas. One of the conclusions we drew is that the place where there is the most cooperation is the place where we find the most obstacles, and the places where we find no obstacles does not mean that the cooperation is fantastic, no, it means that there is not enough cooperation. I have already explained the objectives. We want to reduce the barriers, improve the understanding of each barrier, promote sustainable methods, resolve and involve all public bodies (national, regional, local), stimulate this change of information, and encourage the replication of these cases.

Comparisons can be made, but it is very difficult to translate and reproduce the theoretical exercise. Countries are very different and tailor-made solutions are needed. Sometimes the process takes longer. You must be prepared to change the legal framework, perhaps at national level, and if you are a small municipality, you need additional tools, political commitment, commitment at different levels, and you must do a very thorough analysis. We are dealing with legal aspects and information needs to be shared, not kept. There is a great need for capacity building and of course we need to make full use of other instruments, we need to interact. We have EGTCs, but they are not enough, so we need a legal instrument.

We then formulated a series of policy recommendations and produced a series of publications, all of which are available on the website. If you google the b-solutions project and go to the library, you will find the first compendium, which is theoretical and methodological, including their recommendations and the appendix with the first 43 cases, and the second compendium with the second set of 47 cases, 3 sematic publications (one on cross-border policy services, one on labour markets and one on the Green Deal). Finally, there is my favourite publication, a beautiful narrative in which you will find 7 stories of real people: a person who could not meet her boyfriend on the other side of the border because of a legal barrier to study or work, firefighters, and so on. Anyway, I will not spoil it, go ahead, it is very short and very well done, I think. We are very proud of this product, and especially if you have got a politician who says there are no obstacles to border cooperation, give them this booklet, it will take them 15 or 20 minutes to read it…