The advantages of the European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation were presented in San Roque, Cádiz, Spain, during a seminar on cross-border cooperation organised within the 25th Summer School of the University of Cádiz.

Fabian Picardo, Chief Minister of Gibraltar, Juan Carlos Ruiz, Mayor of San Roque, Martín Guillermo Ramírez, Secretary General of the Association of European Border Regions, and Alfonso Alcolea Martínez, official of the Committee of the Regions in charge of the EGTC Platform, were among the speakers of the seminar, under the academic direction of Professor Alejandro Del Valle, Jean Monnet Chair of the University of Cádiz.

"There will be no agreement about the sovereignty of Gibraltar, let's be honest", said Mr Picardo, "but we may cast aside that issue and increase our cooperation in the economic field". The Chief Minister presented a study according to which one fourth of the income of the Campo de Gibraltar, estimated in 110 billion €, is directly linked to Gibraltar, "and this income could increase by 20%".

"There are technical formulas of cooperation, like the EGTC, that can be applied in the border between Spain and Portugal, solving the day-to-day needs of the citizens", explained Mr Alcolea. "The EU has got legal tools and financial instruments to find solutions for transport, mobility, SME creation, employment, health or emergencies".

"The advantage of the EGTC is that it is a European technical tool, and it allows working together overcoming other political considerations", the representative of the CoR added. "We are not aware of the concrete circumstances and cannot give recipes or tell the authorities what to do, but we can explain the best practices implemented in other borders, each of them with their specificities, some of them politically sensitive", he concluded. 

The participants in the seminar, students, scholars and representatives of the civil society, made a practical exercise consisting in a simulation of an EGTC "Gibraltar-Campo de Gibraltar".

The University of Cádiz presented the periodical "Cuadernos de Gibraltar / Gibraltar Reports".