The beginning of 2020 saw the global spreading of the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to a systematic closure of national borders across the world, which we refer to as the ‘covidfencing’ panorama. As expected, in Europe, where close to two million commuters cross national borders on a daily basis to work, this new reality has provoked significant setbacks to their lives. Based on evidence already available from several sources, this article presents some of the main impacts of the covidfencing process in the European cross-border (CB) areas. It does so by relating this process to the components of a proposed deterritorialism conceptual framework. In essence, it was possible to conclude that social related components like the sharing of health facilities and the need to work across borders show the existence of a high degree of deterritorialism in several parts of Europe. Nevertheless, more integration and deterritorialism is required everywhere, and simultaneously at the social, economic, physical and institutional levels. Crucially, covidfencing has highlighted the need for improving cross-border cooperation (CBC) with a view to mitigating persistent CB barriers and European integration processes.

The INTERREG-A, the largest of the Community Initiatives, has been supporting the cross-border cooperation (CBC) in European Union (EU) territory, over the past 19 years, thus contributing to redraw a new political map of Europe, by reducing the barrier effect and reinforcing common development strategies. During this period, several new partnerships and institutions have been established, creating networks that connect a wider range of local and regional actors into the CBC process, on both sides of the borders. Some of these entities have gradually started to call themselves Euroregions, based on non-rigid criteria, even though, in some cases, they lack legal personality and operate on an informal basis. Moreover, it was recently approved by the European Commission the possibility to establish European Groupings of Territorial Cooperation, with legal personality, in border areas, to overcome the obstacles to the CBC process. Therefore, in this article, we propose a new CBC typology which looks at the concept of Euroregion in a geographical perspective, supported on different criteria and adapted to the present-day reality of the European border territories.

EU cross-border cooperation programmes were formally established with the launching of the first INTERREG Community Initiative (1989-1993). Since then, these programmes have been expanding to Northern and Eastern Europe. At present, the INTERREG V-A (2014-2020), formally known as European Territorial Cooperation (strand A – crossborder cooperation), covers more than 60% of the EU territory and 40% of EU inhabitants, making it one of the most politically relevant EU financed programmes. For the most part, however, these programmes are still regarded by both the European Commission and national and regional authorities as a complementary financial tool to support growth and regional development strategies. In this context, this article analyses what have been the main strategic goals of the EU cross-border cooperation programmes, whilst supporting a new strategic paradigm for these programmes during the post-2020 EU policies programming phase focused on reducing the barrier-effects in all their main dimensions.

Impact Assessment procedures have gained increasing attention from the European Commission (EC), as fundamental tools in providing evidence of the potential impacts of European Union (EU) financed projects/programmes/policies. Yet, only recently, the Territorial Impact Assessment (TIA) of EU directives and Policies have gained a broader support from the EC, as a result of pivotal contributions from several ESPON projects in producing adequate TIA techniques/tools/methods (TEQUILA, Quick Check, EATIA). In the meantime, these tools are being perfected, alongside others (like the TARGET_TIA), in order to provide a more efficient and broader analysis of the evaluated project/programme/policy territorial impacts. Furthermore, there is a general agreement that TIA needs to take on account the different territorial levels (EU, national, regional, local), and should be applied in specific sector policies/programmes, which require more holistic evaluation procedures, as they have a strong territorial dimension. This is clear in the case of the Cross-Border Cooperation (CBC) programmes, due to their large scope of interventions on providing territorial development of the border areas, which in the EU encompass more that 60% of its territory. In light of this, this article proposes an adaptation of the TARGET_TIA technique to assess the territorial impacts of the CBC programmes, by focusing on the evaluation of the components of the CBC programmes specific goals: barrier effect reduction and territorial capital valorisation.

This paper examines the design and implementation process of Integrated Strategies for Sustainable Urban Development (ISUD), as well as their main effects and lessons learned in two European cities: Barcelona in Spain, a vibrant European metropolis, and Évora in Portugal, a medium-sized city with a world heritage historic centre. The former is facing socioeconomic challenges in some of its neighbourhoods, while the latter, a regional capital of an already depopulated region, Alentejo, is facing further depopulation and socioeconomic challenges. Following from a qualitative analysis of ISUD and other urban plans implemented in past decades, the article employs a framework with five analytical dimensions, based on the policy cycle (priority setting, participatory approaches, implementation strategy, collaboration networks, and measuring results and impact). These provide a framework to identify best practices. The findings demonstrate that ISUD in both cities provides impetus for sustainable strategic planning, but can be strengthened in particular via the active involvement of citizens and stakeholders in the elaboration and implementation of these ISUD. Conversely, the results demonstrate mounting challenges that many urban planners in medium-sized towns face in relation to inverting depopulation trends, raising further questions of to what extent European Cohesion policy, and ISUD in particular, can contribute to territorial cohesion objectives whilst also aiming to achieve other policy goals.