Speakers:

• Mr José Luis Pascual Criado, Director of the EGTC Duero-Douro (Spain and Portugal)
• Mr Ján Ferenčák, alternate CoR member, Mayor of Kežmarok, Chairman of the Region Združenie (Slovak Republic) and member of the EGTC TATRY (Slovak Republic and Poland)
• Mr Peter Nagy, Director of the EGTC Ister-Granum (Hungary and Slovak Republic)
• Ms Alena Kolářová, policy officer of the European LEADER association for Rural Development

Discussion:

Around 80% of the 55 European Groupings of Territorial Cooperation (EGTCs) established till October 2015 are platforms of strategic development and integrate cross-border rural-urban areas. The participants discussed about the possibilities of implementing Structural and Investment funds using the different EU-funded programmes, including new instruments.

Raffaele Cattaneo gave an overview of the situation, with the vast majority of the EGTCs operating in rural areas, and underlined that it is important to explore how to do better use of the EU funds. However, in view that there is a preference not to use new tools as the CLLD at cross-border level and that in general the European Commission (DG Agri) is not particularly involved in cross-border actions, Mr Cattaneo raised the questions of how to coordinate the actions of rural development at cross-border level and how to improve the actions of the EGTCs related to rural development.  

José Luis Pascual Criado gave an overview to the activities of the EGTC www.duero-douro.com, including a recent project of centralised purchase that improved the energy efficiency of the small rural municipalities involved. According to Mr Pascual's experience, the main problems have been related to operating in two countries with the same legal personality and to participate effectively in the planning and programming of the EU funds, because the territory of Duero-Douro is peripheral and is far from the decision-making centres.

Ján Ferenčák presented the EGTC Tatry, which gathers 135 local and regional authorities and intends to have an impact on 1,500,000 citizens, 70% located in rural areas. The EGTC launched a cross-border agenda 2014-2020 that focuses on promoting cross-border partnerships, cross-border education, improving connectivity and promoting the cultural and natural heritage. This EGTC works very closely with the cross-border programme PL-SK. 

Peter Nagy introduced Ister-Granum, the second EGTC established in Europe, which gathers 44 Hungarian and 38 Slovak municipalities, overlapping with the territory of 3 local action groups. Ister-Granum combines urban and rural development and its priorities include both urban and rural issues: logistics and enterprise, infrastructures, tourism and cultural heritage, environment and renewable energy and commercialisation of local products. The EGTC is implementing a comprehensive action based on a local product cluster which includes cross-border branding, publications, promotion, networking and distribution.
 
Alena Kolářová presented the actions of the European LEADER Association for Rural Development, encouraging the EGTCs to participate in EU-wide platforms such as the European Network of Rural Development. As the Local Action Groups are linked to the municipalities, it is frequent that they work together with the EGTCs in the areas where these structures exist.

Conclusions:
The conclusions of the workshop were drafted by the participants and the speakers together. The strongest points are potential of the EGTCs to create partnerships and to elaborate joint strategic visions. The most promising fields of action seem to be related to innovation, diversification, promotion of rural SMEs, energy, water, cross-border tourism and culture. The challenges are related to the legal obstacles to work at cross-border level, the lack of funding options, and the balance between rural and urban goals, together with a possible perception of "competition" among organisations. The visibility, participation and coordination with all the local authorities acting on the ground are essential to build cross-border partnerships, and in particular the EGTCs have to work shoulder-to-shoulder with the Local Action Groups.

More information:

www.cor.europa.eu/egtc
www.duero-douro.com
www.tatry.pl
www.istergranum.hu