Marie Vannouque-Digne is director-general for international affairs at the Lille Metropolitan Urban Community. In that capacity, she steered the creation of the first European Grouping for Territorial Cooperation (EGTC), the Lille-Kortrijk-Tournai Eurometropolis, based in Lille.

Cooperation has a long tradition in the region. What added value does an EGTC bring in this case?

It’s true that we already had 15 years’ experience in cooperation in the region. But what was in place before, which grouped three Belgian intermunicipalities and one in France, under a French law on associations, was insufficient and ran into practical problems resulting from different statutes and competences in the two countries. These problems prevented us from implementing certain projects because the bodies on the two sides of the border did not have the same powers. So we were looking for a solution that would allow us to go further institutionally. Our EGTC, which involves all levels of power – including the state – gives us the possibility to address all subjects. On each side of the border we can associate all levels of power: states, regions, departments, etc. We no longer have to ask “who does what”. So in our case, the grouping opens real possibilities for cooperation. We are now a total of 14 partners, compared to four previously, so we’ve come a long way from our earlier situation.

Could you give us some examples of projects that will be implemented by this EGTC?

Our structure was created in January 2008 and is still in its infancy. We haven’t validated our work plan at this stage. But based on our past experience, our areas of cooperation will likely concern transport and mobility, problems that citizens experience every day, joint education and training programmes, and economic development. We’ll look into how we can help the employment market benefit those on both sides of the border, how we can place pooled public orders, and so on. This year we have a budget of a million euro and for the moment we are still moving into the operational phase, which means that there are still a lot of practical problems to be settled: staff rules, and so on. But the Eurometropolis is already trying, for example, to participate in European invitations to tender under the Interreg programme.

You are living proof that it is possible to move forward even if the states have not yet adopted the legislation required. At the time the EGTC was created, neither France nor Belgium had the necessary laws in place and Belgium still does not, in fact...

But the EU regulation is directly applicable, even if the states have to adapt their legislation. What facilitated things for us is that the state participates in the EGTC. To be able to set it up perfectly legally, we obtained a derogation based on a previous agreement, which gave the Lille region and its Belgian partners a right of initiative and experimentation on cross-border cooperation. And we were also able to take things forward because the problem of transposition was simply one of timing.

Did you come up against any particular difficulties?

The staff rules – a single set of rules has to be defined – represent a considerable difficulty, and linguistic parity is a challenge. Since we’re the first to try, we have all the initial problems to put up with. But we’re also trying to share this experience so that other interested authorities can anticipate certain problems and benefit from our first steps. We have shared our statutes, our convention, etc. That too is European cooperation! And if it can help spare months of work for someone else...

Do you have any advice for those who may be interested in following in your footsteps?

First, an EGTC shouldn’t be created just for the sake of having an EGTC. The starting point is to analyse carefully the needs and the political will behind the idea. Technical logistics also need to be ensured. Attempting this experience requires a lot of good will, a great deal of ambition and flexibility on how to achieve your goal. You have to be ready to make quite a few concessions, which is part of a partnership. And, above all, you mustn’t be afraid to put problems on the table, to discuss them openly and not to imagine that they’ll solve themselves. That means having a lot of good will and respect for all the partners.