The European Commission’s proposal for a cross-border mechanism (ECBM)

Abstract

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to examine the viewpoints of key stakeholders on the European Commission's proposal for a regulation for a mechanism to resolve legal and administrative obstacles in cross-border regions. The mechanism known as ECBM, or European Cross-border mechanism, was presented as part of the legislative package for EU Cohesion Policy 2021-2027. The regulation will allow one Member State to apply their legal provision in another Member State for a concretely defined case. This proposal is particularly interesting as it does not give further competence to the European level, but changes how Member States may interact with one another, yet, it raises critiques as regards to its compliance with constitutional, international and European law.Design/methodology/approach -This paper outlines the main elements of contention, which are legal justification, state sovereignty, compliance with the subsidiarity and proportionality principle, thematic and territorial scope, voluntariness and the administrative burden.Findings -The author concludes that the assessment of the voluntariness of the regulation will be crucial in examining the regulations compliance with EU principles and suggests that a more nuanced reading as to which parts of the regulation are voluntary is needed. The author further expects the legal text to change substantial during the legislative procedure, in particular in regard to the thematical scope and the bindingness.Originality/value -This piece summarises the debate currently held in the European Council and the European Parliament in a structured way to an interested readership. Examining the proposed regulation and the arguments for and against it offers the opportunity to review the main arguments that will be raised in any future debate on legal proposals on territorial development initiatives.

Perspectives of strengthened cooperation between cross-border regions: The European Commission’s proposal of a regulation on the mechanism to resolve legal and administrative obstacles in the cross-border context

“…It has been claimed that a regulatory mechanism could not be based on this provision, as it would only allow adoption of financing measures. 53 This form of criticism seems to be quite formalistic, as it is based on an extremely reductive reading of the cohesion policy. Pushing it to the extreme, one could argue that the EU cannot even adopt the legal framework allowing for those financing measures, as it should limit itself to payments (evidently on the basis of a mere political decision, since there can be no regulatory provisions regarding this matter).…”

“…56 Furthermore, it has been highlighted that the Commission's proposal does not take adequate account of the problems that would arise from applying in a Member State legal provisions that have been developed in another Member State. 57 That would amount to a graft based on an aseptic approach to law, as it would not take into account that legal provisions are influenced by the context in which they have been developed; therefore, they cannot simply be transplanted into another context without being affected by that change and become something else.…”

EU Cohesion Policy and European spatial governance: an introduction to territorial, economic and social challenges

“…The trialogue's aim is to result in an agreed text. The two legislators, the European Parliament and the European Council, will then decide on the text (Nugent, 1989(Nugent, [2006; Sielker, 2018b Over the last funding periods, the Parliament has been influential in strengthening overall goals such as those linked to climate change as well as linking cohesion funding to these goals where -for example, in discussions around the Resilience and Recovery Fund as well as the Just Transition Fundit has been instrumental in including rule of law stipulations and strengthening climate goals.…”

“…Regarding European spatial governance, new governance tools, such as European macro-regions, have been less contentious, while new European government tools such as the European Cross-Border Mechanism have proven to be contested, in particular by the European Council (Sielker, 2016(Sielker, , 2018b.…”

Collaborative Strategy Optimization of Cross-Border e-Commerce Coordination along the Belt and Road Initiative

“…As the quality difference and price difference of goods traded on cross-border e-commerce platforms are small among various platforms, cross-border e-commerce companies need to seize customers with better quality services, to improve their competitive advantages and expand their brand influence. Therefore, the quality and efficiency of cross-border coordination become one of the important considerations for cross-border e-merchants to establish their core competitiveness, and the excellent level of cross-border coordination will help cross-border e-merchants occupy the market and increase sales [2].…”