News

The consultation round on the upcoming ITEM Cross-Border Impact Assessment 2021 is herewith launched! Grab the opportunity to share your experiences with ITEM! Dossier suggestions can be made up to and including 18 January 2021.

Many European borders were closed this spring simply because governments were unable to make agreements about the various national corona measures, and not primarily due to public health considerations. This is the conclusion of the annual Cross-Border Impact Assessment by the Institute for Transnational and Euregional cross-border cooperation and Mobility/ITEM at Maastricht University.

In border regions, national approaches to managing the corona crisis sometimes seem absurd. This is shown by the Cross-Border Impact Assessment 2020 that expertise centre ITEM publishes today. The report on the cross-border coordination, or non-coordination, of crisis response during the ‘first wave’ of the COVID-19 pandemic is one of six dossiers that examine the impact of policy and legislation on cross-border regions.

Since August 2020 ITEM has moved to a beautiful historic building of Maastricht University in the city centre of Maastricht. In addition, ITEM has a new coordinator, Pascal Vossen, who runs the daily office since this spring.

Discoordination at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak caused numerous bottlenecks in the border regions, which proved to have negative effects on Euregional cooperation. The PANDEMRIC project (Interreg V-A Euregio Maas-Rijn), aimed at promoting Euroregional cooperation in the field of health care, may offer opportunities for optimal cross-border crisis management.

From 1 January 2020, a new Dutch law regarding the legal status of civil servants can prevent certain employees of Dutch universities from working at home. In a change from the current situation, from January on it matters to cross-border workers how much time they work in the office or from home.