Established in the context of the Commission’s 2017 Communication on border regions, b-solutions is a four-year initiative to tackle legal and administrative challenges along EU internal borders. Composed of four callsfor proposals, all applications were assessed by the Association of European Border Regions (AEBR) in collaboration with the Border Focal Point at the Commission’s DG REGIO.

Under the first call for proposals in 2018 and the second one in 2019, a total of 43 cases were selected.

The third and fourth rounds, in summer 2020 and early 2021 respectively, accepted applications in 6 themes: Employment, Evidence and Data, Health, Information Services, Institutional Cooperation and Multilingualism.

In total, 47 cases were selected to receive support of legal experts with knowledge of cross-border instances who will elaborate possible solutions together with roadmaps to implement them. Some examples of the projects awarded are Coorcurity by euregio rhein-maas-nord, facilitating the coordination of social security systems for cross-border workers and pensioners, the Cross Border Transport of Medical Goods per Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (i.e., drones) by the Eems Dollard Region, and Corona Pandemic and Home Office – Consequences for the social security and taxation of cross-border workers by Grenzinfopunkt Aachen-Eurode.

To follow, AEBR and the European Commission will release a compendium complementing the first one released in Summer 2020, with the findings included in the experts’ final reports to raise awareness and promote knowledge exchange.

In the meantime, please find the full list of projects for the third call here and for the fourth one here. 

To read the first compendium, click here.