Yesterday, the Nice Côte d’Azur Metropolis took a further step in developing its Cross-Border Cooperation Scheme (SCT) with neighboring Italian, Monegasque, and French territories.
On the occasion of the seminar on the cross-border cooperation scheme, the various stakeholders present were able to debate and exchange ideas during workshops and a roundtable. Italians, French, and Monegasques gathered at the European Center for Business and Innovation in Nice to share their cooperation strategies.
The cross-border cooperation service was created on January 1, 2019, within the Directorate of Europe and External Funding. Its mission is to coordinate the cross-border cooperation actions of the Nice Côte d’Azur Metropolis and the CCAS. The European Commission now invites stakeholders to participate in regional territorial cohesion in order to better coordinate different strategies, legislation, and national funding.
Innovative cross-border workshops
In total, three co-construction workshops allowed participants to address topics on current cross-border challenges:
- Workshop A: Proximity Scale – Coast and Hinterland:
The aim of the workshop is to promote the emergence and structuring of a cross-border and metropolitan living area for 1 million inhabitants as a factor of attractiveness. The workshop thus addressed issues with requirements in terms of access to employment and the development of innovative economic sectors.
- Workshop B: Cooperation Scale – Mountain:
This second workshop was an opportunity to delve deeply into the development of the Mountain region by creating cross-border public services. Employment, training, digital matters, and eco-tourism were also debated. Regarding eco-tourism, participants focused their discussions on enhancing the economic attractiveness of ski resorts, improving hotel infrastructures, and health tourism.
- Workshop C: Inter-metropolitan Innovation Scale:
The final workshop resulted in the desire to increase economic attractiveness through the creation of a cross-border agency similar to a European Economic Interest Grouping (EEIG), the creation of an Erasmus program, and a multilingual portal. Additionally, research is considered crucial with the creation of a European university.
A roundtable: from health to mobility
The debate mainly focused on developing a cross-border strategy and raised the question of the role for the Nice Côte d’Azur Metropolis and its neighbors on the macro-regional alpine, Mediterranean, and European scales. For the Nice Côte d’Azur Metropolis and its representative, Sébastien Viano, it is about “preserving the territory, developing its economy, ensuring a better quality of life for its residents and of course, long-term cooperation with the surrounding countries through a tripartite cooperation with Italy and Monaco.”
On the Alpine territory side, the mayor of Servoz, Nicls Evrard, speaks of a need to “maintain cohesion between cities and rural mountain areas as part of the macro-regional strategy and develop tourism, mobility to keep our citizens in the mountains, but also the energy transition to which I invite the youth to participate and finally promote the short supply chain.”
In summary, the various speakers expressed their concerns about continuing to work towards cohesion of territories and relevant services in order to develop areas like mobility, employment, economic attractiveness, bilingualism, tourism, and eco-tourism.
