Co-organised by the European Committee of the Regions, Friuli-Venezia Giulia and the AEBR
The IX AEBR Cross-Border School was a pre-conference event on 12 November at the University of Trieste in Gorizia
(updated on 16 November 2025)
(There were separate registration forms for the CB School, the AEBR General Assembly and the ECBP Annual Meeting)
– the IX AEBR Cross-Border School (open audience)
Wednesday, 12 November 2025, from 9.00 to 17.00 h, at the Università degli Studi di Trieste – Sede di Gorizia, via Bartolomeo d’Alviano 18, Gorizia
– the AEBR General Assembly 2025 (only for AEBR members and observers)
Thursday, 13 November, from 8.00 to 10.00 h, at the Auditorium of Friulian Culture, via Roma 23, I-34170 Gorizia
– the European Cross-Border Platform (ECBP) Annual Meeting 2025: dedicated page on CoR website (open audience)
Thursday, 13 November 2025, from 10.30 to 17.00 h, and Friday, 14 November, from 9.00 to 13.30 h, at the Auditorium of Friulian Culture, Gorizia
Background information: The President of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region (FVG), Massimiliano Fedriga, announced on 19 June 2025 the decision of the Steering Committee of the European Cross-Border Platform (ECBP), communicated by the Platform’s Secretariat at the European Committee of the Regions, to hold the ECBP Annual Meeting in Gorizia on 13 and 14 November 2025. He showed his satisfaction at hosting this annual cross-border event and acknowledged the strategic value of CBC, FVG being a major CBC player in Europe for decades: “The selection of Gorizia – said President Fedriga – testifies to the relevance of our territory in the European landscape, thanks to the significant steps made in recent years in terms of CB relationship, territorial cohesion and building a common space by institutions and communities. The joint experience of GO!2025 – the European Cultural Capital in Nova Gorica and Gorizia is a concrete and forward-looking demonstration of what this region represents in Europe”.
The European Cross-Border Platform (ECBP) was launched in November 2024 in Budapest to unite the efforts of the CoR’s EGTC Platform, the AEBR, the CESCI and the MOT to boost, promote and protect CBC in our continent, consolidate CBC structures through the support to EGTCs, euroregions, eurodistricts and eurocities, and get a closer and coordinated look at the situation of European border citizens. The ECBP Steering Committee decided to organise its annual meetings as a collaboration of the CoR, the hosting region and one of the participating networks. In 2025, AEBR co-organises the ECBP Annual Event 2025, CESCI will do so in 2026, and MOT in 2027.
At this first regular Annual Meeting of the Platform, a series of high-level sessions has been organised to exchange views and coordinate efforts on the future of CBC within EU policies, building resilient border and cross-border regions, and EU enlargement, as well as the EGTCs’ added value and future perspectives.
On the first day, we focused on capitalising on the CBC experience, developed through existing instruments such as Interreg and the EGTCs, future ones (such as a correctly implemented BRIDGEforEU), and a variety of projects and players from every side of society. We received contributions from institutional, technical, project, and academic partners, as well as other stakeholders from across Europe, to debate the future of CBC with politicians, some findings of the brand-new Resilient Borders‘ project pilot actions, focused on CB planning and crises management, and the role of CBC in the Western Balkans, looking into a future accession.
The second day was devoted to the European Groupings of Territorial Cooperation (EGTC), the meeting point for more than 80 operational EGTCs. Besides the EGTC GO! between Gorizia, Nova Gorica and Šempeter-Vrtojba, founded in 2011, the Friuli Venezia Giulia region is an active part of the “Euroregione Senza Confini” EGTC, established in 2012 with Carinthia (AT) and Veneto (IT) regions, another “virtuous example of territorial synergy”, in President Fedriga’s words. During his announcement, he also referred to the excellent opportunity that these Events would provide to discuss the Commission’s regulatory proposals for Cohesion Policy after 2027 and to reaffirm the role of border regions in the European integration process.
12 EGTCs discussed from the podium (and a few more from the floor) about their added value (Kvarken, Chaves-Verín, Nouvelle Aquitaine- Euskadi- Navarra, Pannon, GO, European Campus of Studies and Research, and Saar-Moselle) and shared their future perspectives (Pyrenees Mediterranean, Via Carpathia, Senza Confini, Tyrol-South Tyrol-Trentino, and PAMINA) with officials and representatives of the European Commission and the European Committee of the Regions.
The final programme is available on the CoR’s dedicated website and also via this Dropbox link. Once we have all the presentations and permissions, we will include the programme with links to the presentations in this updated news (using the same link).
The day before the Annual Meeting, on Wednesday 12 November, the IX AEBR Cross-Border School also took place in Gorizia, in collaboration with the local branch of the University of Trieste, and one more year within the Canadian-led 21st Century Borders project and Radboud University in Nijmegen. The host organised a session about the Youth CB perception and participation, attracting a good number of students and continuing a very interesting trend to involve young members of our teams, politicians, junior experts, trainees, in our discussions. The impact of the Interreg Volunteer Youth (IVY) project can also be felt, as long as we find many “IVYs” more often in our partners’ teams, at the institutions and in CB structures. Exactly one of the visions we had long time ago when designing this initiative.
We invited the Horizon Europe B-SHAPES project, Border SHAping Perceptions of European Societies, which is in its final phase, to organise a roundtable with some of the main researchers to discuss their experience with the project and present preliminary results. It primarily analyses euroscepticism, minorities, and landscapes in cross-border regions, and is very focused on exploring citizens’ perceptions, particularly those of younger generations, policy-makers, and civil society. We also invited the Resilient Borders pilot actions to present and discuss their preliminary results with the Commission’s Border Focal Point and Joint Research Centre, as well as other CBC practitioners, scholars and students, through a poster presentation. This project has organised its Final Conference in Gorizia with a partners’ workshop in the morning of 12 November, a session at the CBS, and another session on 13 November during the ECBP Annual Meeting, to present this project to the CBC Community.
The CBS was organised independently of the ECBP events, with a separate registration process, to facilitate procedures and logistics, while maintaining the overall focus on “Resilient Borders” developed in recent years and aligned with the ECBP Annual Meeting’s logic.
This was the final programme of the IX CBS 2025 in Gorizia.
On Thursday, 13 November, the AEBR General Assembly took place in the morning (8:00 h), chaired by AEBR Vice-President Pavel Branda. AEBR members ratified Joris Bengevoord as AEBR President until the end of this mandate (2027), approved the usual regularia and welcomed a few members.
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