Will territorial cooperation be made easier? The revision of the EU’s cohesion policy should be the opportunity to adapt EU legislation on the European Groupings of Territorial Cooperation (EGTC), a legal instrument put in place at the same time as the 2007-2013 Structural Funds to simplify cooperation between territorial authorities of different member states (Regulation 1082/2006/EC). Four years after the adoption of this regulation and nearly three years after the creation of the first EGTC - Lille-Kortrijk-Tournai on the Franco-Belgian border – the European Commission is preparing a report, to be presented next year. This is likely to contain some proposed amendments.

The time for the first review has therefore arrived. The Committee of the Regions (CoR) has taken the initiative by working on an opinion that will be adopted in the plenary session next February. The Spanish rapporteur, Alberto Núnez Feijóo (EPP), is pretty direct in his assessment of what has been done. “The outcome is very poor when viewed against the expectations generated and the efforts made by the Community institutions and the Committee of the Regions,” says a consultation document from the CoR last June. This is confirmed by José Manuel Blanco Gonzalez, a member of the CoR group of experts on the EGTCs. “Lots of actors in territorial cooperation experience a whole series of problems that prevent them from formalising their cooperation as EGTCs”, he explained during a CoR seminar last July.

These are procedural obstacles, which make the process heavy, long and complicated, due in particular to the fact that each state has its own rules, developed without consultation with others, for setting up an EGTC. So far, only fifteen or so EGTCs have been established. Not everyone shares the CoR rapporteur’s tough analysis, though. Marie-Thérèse Sanchez-Schmid (EPP, France), an MEP and co-author of a parliamentary report on cross-border cooperation for the French government, expressed her “surprise” at the lukewarm assessment compiled by Núnez Feijóo.

From meetings she has carried out as part of her mission, she has heard “good things” about the EGTCs and is convinced that the instrument “meets a real need”. “We have noticed that cooperation experiments have been going on for a very long time between countries but that these experiments run up against legal problems and that, at a given moment, we need to invent a mechanism that can legalise this cooperation, institutionalise it, allow it to have legal foundations,” she explains.

So opinions are divided and the tool can certainly be improved. While it is too early to envisage major changes, the experience that has been gained makes it possible to highlight some teething problems that the forthcoming revision could or should try to correct. A revised regulation would certainly leave national authorities with less room for manoeuvre in terms of deadlines to approve the statutes of an EGTC (a real obstacle course, according to some local authorities). Everyone also agrees that the regulation should make it easier for non-EU countries to participate. Currently, no EGTC involves the local authorities of a third country, mainly because the regulation envisages that an EGTC must be created by at least two EU member states. Therefore, it is impossible to create an EGTC between France and Switzerland or Norway and Sweden. Revision of the regulation should solve that problem.

But where expectations are undoubtedly highest are over difficulties EGTCs have in recruiting staff. The problem, according to the cabinet of the CoR President, Mercedes Bresso, is often raised in replies to a consultation of ‘stakeholders’ to prepare revision of the regulation. While it is too early to know the final results – it was closed at the end of July and the CoR’s teams are currently translating and compiling the replies – the first impression is that problems over pay, the right to work and tax issues are a real headache on the ground. The applicable law is normally that of the country in which the headquarters are based and the impact is not always neutral for employees from another state. Some believe that a solution could come by revising the regulation. “Why not think about a European statute when you have cross-border institutions? Or why not let employees choose the law that would be applicable to them,” Sanchez-Schmid asks. For the MEP, “we need to modify the regulation’s provision that stipulates that the law of the headquarters applies into something that better responds to the difficulties encountered”. That is no doubt easier said than done. Without going as far as a ‘European statute’ – the Commission is extremely cautious on this – the revision could be a chance to open the door to more flexibility on the professional statute of people employed by an EGTC. At any rate, there is a real demand for change here.

“Where expectations are undoubtedly highest are over difficulties EGTCs have in recruiting staff”

EGTCs as managing authorities

When the EGTCs were designed, the European Commission thought they could become the managing authorities for territorial cooperation programmes and projects financed by the Structural Funds. But, so far, only one EGTC has been designed to be a managing authority for a cross-border programme (the ‘Big Region’ EGTC between Germany, Belgium, France and Luxembourg). Within the Commission, it is said that this is mainly a problem of timetabling. Regulation 1082/2006 was adopted practically at the same time as the new 2007-2013 programming period began. So it was too late to be able to exploit this tool as a managing authority unless a provisional structure could be conceived that would move towards an EGTC during the programme. This is complicated, but is what happened for the ‘Big Region’. Since the timetabling problem is solved – provided that the forthcoming revision does not complicate everything – the Commission now expects that more EGTCs will be used as management authorities for programmes after 2013.