Since its constitution in 1971, AEBR’s work has been closely connected to the Council of Europe, leading to the adoption of the Madrid Outline Convention in 1980.
We are uploading the digitalized AEBR documents (very few) and digitalizing the relevant ones we have kept in our files.
This is the first part of the report on the Cooperation of European border territories, prepared by Viktor von Malchus for the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe during the (1st) European Symposium of Border Regions, Strasbourg, 1972. This document focuses on the problematic and basic approach to CBC, its recognition and consideration by official and non-official institutions, and the difficulties in delimitating border territories and regions.
And this is the second part of the document, focused on agreements between nation states and “parts of nation states” (sic), between parts of nation states at supraregional level, contacts with European and national institutions, agreements at local level and occasional cooperation of official and non-official organisations. It also proposes a series of tasks for CBC in different thematic fields and offers some examples based on the different reasons for cooperation, lessons learned and recommendations.
This is von Malchus’ report to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe during the 2nd Symposium of European Border Regions on the Cooperation of European Border Regions. He presented an overview of the work developed between the 1st Symposium in Strasbourg from 29 June to 1 July 1972 and the 2nd Symposium in 1975.
In this documents (only available in German), the first Chairman of the AEBR Advisory Committee reported thoroughly about the situation of CBC in different parts of Europe in 1975, with a lot of detail. He also explained the successful political, institutional and operational work developed by border regions to identify the main problems for CBC, its objectives and tasks, a baseline study (including detailed information about CBC initiatives all over Europe) and a series of recommendations.
The main principles described in this document, with reasonable updates, have guided AEBR work for more than fifty years to promote the Madrid Outline Convention (1980), the conception and implementation of Interreg (1989), the spread of CBC in Central and Eastern European countries from 1990, the extension and consolidation of CBC programmes to non-EU countries, the adoption of the EGTCs (2006), and other initiatives to support CBC in the EU, non-EU territories and other continents.
These documents are also available on the website of the Council of Europe, where you can also find a collection of official texts from this Symposium;
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