Following its plenary assembly on the 23rd of April 2025, the Southern Region published its Europe report: "On track for 2030: the Region commits to being a driving force for cross-border and Alpine cooperation".
As part of the Franco-Italian friendship reaffirmed by the Quirinal Treaty, the autonomous region of Aosta Valley and the Haute-Savoie department have formalised their cooperation by signing a strengthened partnership agreement on the 23rd and 24th of January 2025.
Since March 2023, the Commission for the planning, development and protection of the Jura mountains (Massif du Jura) and the MOT have been working on a cross-border territorial study of the Franco-Swiss massif.
The end of 2024 marked the start of a new mission for the MOT: supported by the Piedmont Region as lead partner, the A-MONT initiative (cross-border mountain framework agreement) which aims to strengthen the dynamics of territorial cooperation between France and Italy in the Northern Alps.
On December 18th, 2024, around forty participants gathered for a webinar organised by the MOT and the ANCT, in partnership with Small towns of tomorrow (Petites villes de demain), Future Villages (Villages d’Avenir) and Mountain Futures (Avenir Montagnes) programmes.
The Observ'Alp partners met in Turin in December 2024 to discuss the initial results of the project and the next steps. The project, funded by the Interreg ALCOTRA programme, aims to set up the first system for observing and sharing territorial data and digital services between border areas, and more specifically between France, Italy and the Principality of Monaco.
The 2024 edition of the Saint-Dié International Geography Festival (FIG), the annual meeting place for French-speaking geographers, will focus on border issues. In addition to this year's theme, ‘Lands’, an opportunity to explore the challenge of ZAN (Net Zero Artificialisation) and its implications, the guest territory for the 2024 edition was a macro-regional area familiar to the MOT network: the Alpine Arc.
On September 1st, the Savoy Department and the Aosta Valley organized the first Alpine Festival at the Little St Bernard Pass.
Discover our project sheets published to coincide with the MOT General Assembly in Dunkirk on June 27th and 28th!
The report entitled "Les nouveaux enjeux de développement des territoires de montagne : Pour une montagne vivante en 2030" ("New development challenges for mountain regions: For a living mountain in 2030") by Joël Giraud, Member of Parliament for the Hautes-Alpes, has just been published.
On April 11th and 12th, 2024, the partners of Observ'Alp, a project financed by the Interreg ALCOTRA program, met in Marseille to continue their work on cross-border observation (France-Italy-Monaco) and take part in the second meeting of the Steering Committee (COPIL) and the Collective Intelligence Committee (CIC).
As part of the partnership between the MOT and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, represented by its Department of Spatial Planning, the MOT led a Franco-German-Luxembourgian cross-border workshop on January 31st 2024 at the Maison de la Nature du Pays de Sierck (Moselle).
Following the launch of the Franco-Italian Border Cooperation Committee, and more recently of the "Observ'Alp" project, which brings together numerous partners between France, Italy and Monaco, Christian Estrosi answers our questions on the major cross-border challenges facing the Metropolis with its border neighbors.
On December 4th and 5th, 2023, the partners of Observ'Alp, a project selected as part of the Interreg ALCOTRA program, met in Nice to discuss their work which will unfold over the next two years.
The "PITER ALPIMED" is a cross-border cooperation strategy funded under the Interreg Alcotra program that ran between 2018 and 2022 in the mountain area between the provinces of Cuneo, Imperia and the Alpes-Maritimes department.
The Commissariat à l'aménagement du Massif du Jura (Jura Massif Planning Commission) has joined forces with the MOT to carry out a cross-border study to take better account of the Franco-Swiss nature of the Jura mountains.
The French and Belgian members of the "Ardennes Cross-Border Strategy" (Stratégie de l'Ardenne Transfrontalière) met on November 9th, 2023 for a strategic committee meeting at the Convention Center in Vieilles-Forges (Ardennes).
On October 31st, 2023, the Piedmontese capital hosted the inaugural meeting of the new Cross-Border Cooperation Committee (CCF), a result of the Quirinal Treaty signed two years ago between France and Italy.
The informal transport ministerial meeting held in Barcelona on September 22th, 2023 as part of the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the EU concluded with the signing of the Barcelona Declaration: "a commitment to accessible, affordable and equitable mobility to promote social and territorial cohesion".
In 2023, the Jura Mountains Development Commission (Commissariat à l'aménagement du Massif du Jura), which is responsible for defining the objectives and actions needed for the development, planning and protection of the mountain range, undertook a cross-border study.
A meeting between Christian Estrosi, mayor of Nice and president of the Nice Côte d'Azur Metropolitan Area, and Claudio Scajola, mayor of Imperia and president of the Province of Imperia, on the 19th of May in Nice, provided an opportunity to present a cross-border coastal development programme between the Nice Côte d'Azur Metropolitan Area and the Province of Imperia, and another programme focusing on the mountains between the Vésubie and Tinée valleys and the neighbouring valleys of the Provinces of Imperia and Cuneo.
On May 17th, 2023, a meeting between the president of the Occitanie region, Carole Delga, and Père Aragones, president of Catalonia, in Barcelona, agreed on the creation of a cross-border working group, the aim of which will be to improve water management and help populations cope with drought.
I was entrusted last March with the presidency of the cross-border strategy of Ardennes initiated in 2019 by the MOT and the Belgian intermunicipal structure IDELUX. The latter covers the territory of the Ardennes department and the Walloon provinces of Luxembourg and Namur.
