Enhancing Cross-Border Cooperation Through TIA Implementation

Cross-border cooperation (CBC) has great socioeconomic potential. If one-fifth of legal obstacles to cross-border interaction would be solved, 2% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in EU cross-border regions – 1 million jobs – could be gained. CBC is hampered by the fact that territories are regulated by different legal frameworks. Legal obstacles derive both from EU and national legislation. National legislative processes seldom take properly into account impacts across borders, including when transposing European legislation. Cross-border investments can have reduced effectiveness because of legal obstacles. To ensure not-border-blind legislation and increasing investment effectiveness, the European Commission (EC) has included Territorial Impact Assessment (TIA) in its Better Regulation Package. Furthermore, it is working to ensure TIA has a CB dimension. This chapter will describe the EC’s experience with CB TIA: (i) analysing tools/methodologies guaranteeing TIA is conducted ex ante, ensuring EU legislative proposals have no asymmetric impact on CB regions and how such tools/methodologies can be explored in national/regional legislative processes and (ii) describing TIA experiences on CBC programmes’ ex post impacts. Europe is a continent characterised by many borders relatively to geographical size. Their impact on people’s lives – despite the single market – is a major concern. That is why the EU needs to be at the forefront in terms of cross-border TIA.