The fourth call for proposals for b-solutions is open

The Association of European Border Regions (AEBR) has launched the fourth call for proposals under the b-solutions initiative.

b-solutions, an initiative of the EU Commission’s DG REGIO managed by AEBR, offers the opportunity to public bodies and cross-border structures to find solutions to legal or administrative obstacles hindering or preventing cross-border cooperation.

If you experience difficulties in your territory because of the presence of overlapping administrative procedures, or due to a lack of legal competence or again because of non-harmonised national provisions, you now have one more and final opportunity to receive technical specialised support to better identify and, eventually solve, the obstacles you face

Thanks to b-solutions, indeed, you will be helped by legal experts with sound knowledge of cross-border issues, who will elaborate targeted and tailor-made roadmaps to resolve the identified hurdles.

Furthermore, beyond the support provided to organisations that face legal and administrative impediments in the daily practice of transboundary cooperation, b-solutions sets a methodology that could become a useful tool for the stakeholders willing to master the next Interreg Programmes 2021-2027, in which the tackling of legal issues will be central.

If you want to have a broader idea of the current and future perspectives of the initiative, we invite you to take a look at the last issue of the European Commission’s Panorama Magazine, where a thorough description of the “state of the art” of b-solutions is provided at page 21.

To have a comprehensive view of the type of obstacles analysed in the framework of b-solutions, and draw some inspiration for your application, we recommend to take a look at the initiative’s website, where you can find the first compendium – published in Summer 2020 by AEBR and the EU Commission’s Border Focal Point at DG REGIO - in which 43 cases from different European internal land borders are illustrated in detail, emphasising the need to adapt legislations to the specificities of border regions.

If instead you are curious to read the description of the most recent obstacles, selected last October under the third call for proposals of the initiative, you can find it here: https://www.b-solutionsproject.com/thematic-areas.

Finally, read the fourth call for proposals, and then submit your application.

The deadline is set on 11 March 2021.