European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation – Report on EGTC

Lina Engström, Malmö stad
Joakim Nergelius, Örebro University, Sweden
Vilhelm Persson, Faculty of law, University of Lund, Sweden
Pontus Tallberg, Region Skåne

Abstract

During a number of years there have been discussions within the EU on how to construct a stronger legal framework for cross-border cooperation. This led to Regulation No 1082/2006 of the Council and the European Parliament of 5 July 2006 that opened up for the possibility to create a special legal body for crossborder cooperation, namely European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation (EGTC).

The purpose of this report is to describe the EGTC instrument from a legal and political perspective, with special consideration to the legal aspects. We have also chosen to describe the origin of EGTC in order to illustrate how it has grown relatively fast.

However, the EGTC is a relatively new tool and therefore it is difficult to draw any extensive conclusions at this early stage. There can be no closer conclusion than the one that the existing EGTC regions of today seem to have multiple forms, purposes and areas of use.

(More comprehensive version available in Swedish.)