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Launch of Hungarian and Slovakian EGTC cross-border cooperation pact: 'It is a bridge to bring ideas to life,'
07.05.2008, 16:20
The iconic Mária-Valéria Bridge over the River Danube, linking the cities of Esztergom in Hungary and Štúrovo in Slovakia, provided the backdrop for the launch today of the first "European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation" (EGTC) in central Europe. Committee of the Regions President Luc Van den Brande, who was guest of honour at the ceremony hosted by the mayors of both cities and the "Ister Granum" Euroregion, hailed the EGTC as a "bridge to bring ideas to life".
The EGTC regulation, conceived by the Committee in the Regions and adopted by the European Parliament and Council in July 2006, provides a legal basis for joint services delivered by local and regional authorities in different Member States. Other public bodies and partners, including Member States themselves, can also participate in an EGTC. Once established, the instrument can help regions and partners to more easily access and manage EU, national or private funding for programmes and projects.
Esztergom and Štúrovo aim to pool their resources on 20 joint projects in the framework of the new EGTC, including a regional healthcare system, new port facilities, the rebuilding of five bridges across the Danube, a regional tourist agency, and bilingual TV and radio broadcasts.
President Luc Van den Brande congratulated the Hungarian and Slovakian authorities for transposing the EGTC regulation into national law "in an impressively short space of time". The pact, signed at Esztergom Royal Castle by Mayor Tamás Meggyes and his Štúrovo counterpart Ján Oravec, is only the second such agreement in the whole of the EU. The first was unveiled by the Lille-Kortrijk-Tournai Eurometropolis (French and Flemish Flanders) on 28 January.
President Van den Brande said Europe needed new tools like the EGTC to tackle new challenges. "Economic globalisation, demographic change, migration flows, climate change, energy ... these challenges are appearing more and more on a borderless basis, around substantial 'functional territories' within the European Union. In this context, the future of our territories can only be shaped by strengthening the alliance for better cohesion and joint competitiveness. We need new tools. We need to take individualised measures reflecting the specificities of local, cross-border and transnational dimensions," he explained.
So far, 10 out of the 27 Member States (France, UK, Spain, Romania, Greece, Hungary, Bulgaria, Portugal, Slovakia and Slovenia) have adopted national provisions on the EGTC and the CoR is urging other Member States to follow suit as soon as possible. Although local and regional authorities can set up an EGTC before Member States adopt the regulation, national provisions are important because they detail, among other things, how responsibilities for delivering services will be split between central and regional levels of government.
The CoR is currently drawing up an own-initiative opinion on the new instrument entitled "The EGTC: a new impetus for territorial cooperation in Europe". The rapporteur, Mercedes Bresso, President of the Piedmont Region in Italy, will present the opinion at the CoR's Plenary Session in Brussels next month (18-19 June). In the context of the plenary, the CoR and European Commission Directorate-General for Regional Policy will organise a conference examining the scope of the EGTC and how it can be used to manage programmes and projects. CoR President Luc Van den Brande and Regional Policy Commissioner Danuta Hübner will be among the participants.
Source: www.cor.eu