Crises and Cross-Border Regions in Europe – Comparative Perspectives

Invitation to a roundtable seminar.

Free movement within cross-border regions is central to the livelihoods of millions across Europe. Several recent crises related to terrorism, migration flows and, most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic have been tackled with predominantly national crisis response measures, such as border closures and lockdowns. Although national measures are not specific to cross-border regions, their negative impact has been most profound and visible in these laboratories of free movement and EU integration. This roundtable seminar aims to shed light on the role and legal status of cross-border regions in the EU, the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on their effective functioning, and policy responses on the regional, Member State and EU levels from the perspectives of three metropolitan INTERREG cross-border regions: the Öresund-Kattegat-Skagerrak, Grande Région/Großregion (Luxembourg) and France- Switzerland (Geneva).

 

08:30 Registration
09:00 Marja-Liisa Öberg, Lund University Welcome address
09:15 Estelle Evrard, University of Luxembourg, and University College London Weaving or spinning cross-border territories? Interpreting cross-border resilience in the light of ‘smooth and striated space’
Marja-Liisa Öberg Conceptualising cross-border regions in the EU legal order
Jasna Pocek, Blekinge Institute of Technology and University of Florence Public policy coordination during the COVID-19 pandemic: Preliminary findings from the Greater Copenhagen cross-border region
10:45 Coffee
11:00 Rhiannon Pugh, Lund University Emerging insights from the Öresund region on cross-border working lives during the COVID-19 pandemic
Pierre-Alexandre Beylier, Université Grenoble Alpes

Cross-border commuters' resilience along the France/Switzerland border in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic: an exploratory methodological approach
Isabelle Pigeron-Piroth, University of Luxembourg

Realities, crises, and challenges in a cross-border labour market: the example of the Greater Region SaarLorLux
12:30 Lunch
13:30 Roundtable discussion Towards increased resilience in cross-border regions
14:45 Marja-Liisa Öberg and Rhiannon Pugh Concluding remarks

 

Registration

Please register by 13 June to Marja-Liisa Öberg