Prof. dr. mr. Kid Schwarz in Magna Charta

On Wednesday 15 March 2023, there will be elections in the Netherlands. We will then vote for the Provincial Council and the District Water Board. Seven of the 12 Dutch provinces border a neighbouring country. Cross-border cooperation and special attention for border regions is therefore extra important. According to Eurostat's definition, the entire province of Limburg qualifies as a border region.

The importance of cross-border cooperation manifests itself more than ever during the coronapandemic. Multi-level governance is the foundation for taking the next steps; looking for each other and perpetuating relationships at all levels, in administration, politics and practice. This became clear during the ITEM annual conference on 19 November, which focused on the lessons learned, opportunities and challenges of cross-border cooperation. Watch the video recap. 

Due to the Corona crisis, also many cross-border workers are forced to work in their home country. They have been asked not to cross the border to come to their office situated in the neighbouring country. At the moment, this is only possible because the Dutch, Belgian and German governments have agreed on special exemptions from certain rules until the rest of this year. Otherwise, these frontier workers would face major changes with respect to their social security contribution, taxes and health care. But what, if governments and employers from now on will permanently stimulate that employees work more days from home? ITEM has found out that this would have tremendous consequences for cross-border work if legislation does not change accordingly. This is one out of four case of this year’s research into border effects.