Brussels (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – The EU Council approved the latest negotiating mandate for a regulation on fostering cross-border solutions for better cross-border interactions with a new mandate.
European Union’s member nations ambassadors to the EU today on 23 Oct 2024 reached an arrangement on the EU Council’s negotiating mandate for the latest regulation on facilitating cross-border solutions.
How will the new regulation improve cross-border cooperation?
The proposed regulation seeks to facilitate cross-border interactions and encourage the development of cross-border regions by making it more comfortable to tackle cross-border challenges, such as the expansion of infrastructure and the operation of cross-border public services. Its essential feature is the composition of cross-border coordination points within member states to address cross-border files submitted to them, either by conveying with initiators on behalf of the qualified authority or by assessing the files themselves.
How are cross-border coordination points expected to function?
Based on its mandate, the European Council endorses the creation of a new legal framework for managing cross-border obstacles to complement existing options. However, it determines the scope of the framework to areas with land borders and makes it completely voluntary for member states to determine whether to set up cross-border coordination points.
According to the EU Council, member states who formed such coordination points would also retain full freedom to choose whether and how to decode cross-border obstacles. Furthermore, the responsibilities of member states not willing to form cross-border coordination points would be determined. In addition, under the Council’s order, only public or private law entities would be competent to initiate cross-border files, while natural persons would not be able to do so.
Why was the previous regulation discussion halted?
The European Commission presented a regulation in May 2018 on a mechanism to determine legal and administrative barriers in a cross-border context. However, member states stopped the discussions on the file due to circumstances over compliance with the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality.
Moving forward on 12 December 2023, the Commission proposed an amended proposal to take into account the problems and recommendations made by the two co-legislators and to follow up on the Parliament’s initiative legislative solution from September 2023. The European Parliament assumed its negotiating mandate on the initial Commission submission on 14 February 2019.
