Co-operation keeps you fit

A fine example of a transnational co-operation project is the North Sea Cycle Route (www.northsea-cycle.com), funded, logically enough, through the North Sea programme. Essentially, this is a marketing exercise, selling a group of national cycle routes as a single North Sea trail. The beauty of this is twofold. Firstly, it has been done extremely well, with excellent visibility (the Guinness World Record for the longest cycle route is genius). Secondly, it seems to me that most cyclists are slightly deranged and view the 6000km length of the Route as a total challenge (witness the list of people who have completed the whole route in around 60 days! Mind you, they'll have trouble doing that now since the ferry connection to Shetland from Norway is being stopped).

At the project level, there appears to have been a genuine North Sea partnership created and there is no doubt that the whole exercise has been extremely professional. There are plenty of lessons here for project managers elsewhere.

Taking a broader view, how much impact does such a project actually have on the local populations? It might improve tourism takings marginally; it might make locals more aware of their own cycle routes; but what else? More generally, is this really what is meant by transnational co-operation? Does this provide the added value everyone seems to be looking for?

Even if the answers to these questions are unclear, looking at the overall impact of the project, it can only be considered a major success. Very few co-operation projects ever achieve this level of visibility at the European level and this can only be applauded.

Now, where's my bicycle pump?

Programme of the week - Central Europe

Rising from the ashes of the, shall we say underperforming, CADSES programme are two new transnational programmes in the form of "Central Europe" and "South-East Europe". The former of these has been quick off the mark with its website design, even if programme approval is not likely before the end of the year, I am told.

The website (http://www.central2013.eu/) is extremely well presented, easy to navigate and packed full of information for project partners. It already contains a long list of project ideas from people desperate to talk to interested partners. I particularly liked the idea of the "Regional eHealth Innovation Network" and "Green building in/and rehabilitation of large housing estates" proposals.

So what are you all waiting for? Go network!

A missed opportunity in the Middle East

I did promise to blog a bit on non-European cross-border issues, and I'll start with a sad example. Several years back now, Jenin, Gilboa and Beit Shein in northern Israel and the northern West Bank came together and created "Cooperation North", a cross-border venture based on the organisation of the same name in Ireland (now called "Cooperation Ireland - see here: http://www.cooperationireland.org/). There were co-ordinators in place on both sides of the border* (this word is used deliberately, notwithstanding the fact this is not an international border), and there were ambitious plans for waste treatment and industrial collaboration, as well as economic and social actions.

This was an enormously important, political step forward, and there were grounds for real optimism. There was already a relatively high level of interdependence economically. The number of Palestinians crossing the border to work in Israel was huge, and the Israeli participants freely agreed that the Palestinians were a vital part of their economy. Then the second Intifada started, and co-operation became impossible. The border was closed and the economic co-operation dried up. It became extremely difficult for the partners to meet, and almost impossible for the Palestinian partners to get out of the West Bank to meet potential funding organisations.

It seems that the process has ground to a halt. Only fragments remain on the web about this whole exercise - see here for a brief mention http://www.shalomarchav.be/article.php3?id_article=255. Indeed, this article, though 5 years old, appears to offer some small hope, noting the progress of key actors in the original co-operation. However, nothing seems to have happened since.

I have heard that the authorities in charge of the Ireland-Northern Ireland Peace programme are keen to make their experiences known to a wider audience and are planning some events to publicise their success. Perhaps that could provide some catalytic impulse for other regions around the world.

If anyone has any information or views on this topic, comments are more than welcome.

The Association of European Border Regions

The AEBR (www.aebr.net) was set up in 1971 to provide a voice for the border regions of Europe. With the advent of EU regional policy, the AEBR's role has developed rapidly and it is one of the main regional organisations in Europe. Its role tends to be a cross between a lobbying organisation and a grouping applying for grants. This can cause tensions from time to time, since it tends to end up lobbying and asking for cash from the same body - the European Commission.

However, the lobbying element seems to work well, as there is often a clear AEBR influence on EU cross-border policy. The AEBR's connections with the European Parliament seem to be especially valuable with the last two AEBR President both being members of the EP.

Equally, the funding side of the business is apparently doing well, with the AEBR leading a major consortium in the Change on Borders project (www.change-on-borders.net) funded by INTERREG IIIC. There is a closing conference coming up for this project later in the autumn (see the events tab on the right). Also, for members, there is the AEBR annual conference in mid-September in Eastern Finland.

In my view, the AEBR is a valuable part of the cross-border lobby in Europe and an effective reminder that, with border regions containing over 1/3 of the EU's population, this is not a marginal or minority constituency, but a major player in European regional policy.

Looking ahead

September seems likely to be a busy month in the world of cross-border co-operation. I hear the Commission is very close to approving the first of the new programmes for 2007-2013. Who will be first, I wonder? Ireland-Wales is very well placed according to my sources, as is Spain-Portugal. Whoever it is will be a new champion, as the Finnish-Swedish programmes that were adopted 3 months before anyone else in 2001 are not quite in the first wave this time.

One point that I have heard several times recently is the importance of getting the programmes up and running quickly. There is momentum to build and and eager project partners waiting for contracts to get started. So maybe the prize should really be for the programme which can get projects selected first? In this case, keep a watch on the Ireland-Northern Ireland-Western Scotland (www.seupb.ie) programme. They appear to have done an awful lot of pre-development work and could well have projects in place later this year.

Interesting times

Measuring cross-border success

One of the great challenges facing cross-border co-operation is proving that it actually works. This is sometimes a difficult problem to explain, as anyone involved in such co-operation is usually pretty convinced that it is a good thing. After all, how can it not be positive to bring people together and improve the living conditions on each side of the border?

Well, of course, that is positive, and the Border Crosser is not going to disagree. But there is a specific difference between knowing in your gut that co-operation works and proving that it does. The INTERREG programmes frequently come under pressure to demonstrate that they are delivering "added value" (such a great phrase - as opposed to subtracted value, I suppose?)

The EU's traditional approach to this question has been to throw indicators at programmes and hope that some stick in a positive manner. The problem with this approach is that successful indicators for regional programmes do not often help in a cross-border context. Numbers of jobs created, improvement in GDP, or increase in tourist numbers, for example, do not really address the issue of whether the co-operation as a whole is working.

There are some ideas out there which have some potential: some of the Nordic programmes have been counting the number of cross-border networks created; this could be combined with the number of such networks which outlast the funding from the programme perhaps. There must be more project level measurements that could be developed along these lines.

Another direction that should be explored is measuring the mechanics of the programmes themselves: number of split decisions in programme committees; length of committee meetings; number of projects which are delayed by more than x months; number of projects with changed partnerships. These are all factors which could be used in measuring the overall success of the cross-border programmes. Any results would probably have to be calculated into a single weighted score, whch would allow comparisons from programme to programme. Such a comparative aspect could be the best way to assess co-operation as a whole.

It's unlikely that there is a perfect system out there. If a programme scored very highly on co-operation, someone would claim that they are so good that they would not any more funding. However, indicators are here to stay and programmes need to start looking at them as an opportunity to demonstrate success, rather than seeing them as an adminstrative burden.

Well, that's far too serious and long a post for a Friday afternoon! Let me know what you think.

Hidden Europe

I have just discovered the marvellous magazine "Hidden Europe" (www.hiddeneurope.co.uk), the title of which is, I hope, fairly self-explanatory. They travel to the corners and out of the way regions of Europe and report back every two months. The quality of the writing is extremely high, as is the quality of the insights that they provide on the places they visit. One recent set of articles on Nagorno-Karabakh was especially fascinating.

As our favourite subject on this blog, cross-border regions, are very often off the beaten track, they feature pretty regularly in the magazine. The latest issue features the Narva river between Estonia and Russia, the Saimaa Canal between Finland and Russia, and the Slovenian-Croatian border, to name but 3 articles.

Highly recommended.