Denmark

The 2007 local government reform has contributed to reduce fragmentation of investment strategies, through municipal mergers and the creation of regions in charge of developing investment strategies.

European Union

The Council of the EU and the European Parliament decided to allocate 5% of European Regional Development Funding (ERDF) funds to either Integrated Territorial Investments. Through ITIs, Members States can combine investments from several Priority Axes for multi-dimensional and cross-sectoral intervention. Targeted areas are “specific urban neighbourhoods with multiple deprivation at the urban, metropolitan, urban rural, or inter-regional levels”. ITIs aim at implementing strategies at an integrated level, and combine funding from several Priority Axes or Operational Programmes, hence increasing flexibility for Member States and simplify financing for integrated actions.

France

- The strategic territorial plans called SCOT (schemas de coherence territorial) set the main orientations of the organization of a group of adjacent communies (intercommunalité) for a 10-year period. City plans (plan local d’urbanisme - PLU), local urban transport plans, and housing plans must be compatible with SCOT in order to be valid and enforced.

- A law to promote metropolitan governance was adopted in January 2014, creating new governance structures for top three metropolitan areas around Paris, Lyon and Aix-Marseille, as well as for 11 other urban areas exceeding 400 000 inhabitants on a voluntary basis. They will be granted greater competencies in certain fields such as economic development, transport, housing, environment, roads and social action; thus facilitating investment at the relevant scale. 

Hungary

The 2012 Constitution states that sectoral laws may force municipalities to merge or co-operate. A threshold of 2 000 inhabitants is set for local administration to regroup their administrative services.

Luxembourg

At the inter-communal level, a number of cities and adjacent municipalities have signed formal agreements or “Conventions” with the Ministry of Spatial Planning. These agreements aim to safeguard more sustainable development by implementing the objectives of the master programme for territorial planning and Luxembourg’s Integrated Concept for Transport and Territorial Development.

Netherlands

The Taskforce Cross-border collaboration is a joint initiative of the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium. It covers joint activities in innovation, co-ordination of structural funds, infrastructure, and labour markets to improve cross-border labour market matching, co-ordinate mutual recognition of diplomas, develop joint educational facilities, and remove institutional barriers to mortgages of cross-border commuters, among other activities.

Switzerland

Switzerland relies on three major mechanisms to promote co-operation across regions: i) cantonal conferences; ii) inter-cantonal concordats (agreements); iii) cross-border cooperation.  The federal government provides up to CHF 500 000 annually over three to six years for innovative multi-jurisdiction projects (over 50 since 2002).