Cross-Border development hailed as model for EU

A development plan for the Border region which is due to be presented to authorities north and south of the Border next week has been hailed by the European Commission as a model for the integration of Eastern Europe.

The "multi-sectoral" development plan makes recommendations on how local authorities on both sides of the Border can co-ordinate their strategies on public transport, roads, recreational facilities and gas and electricity distribution.

Three existing Border networks, the north-western, central and eastern, have been working on the development proposals since May of last year, when they were asked to do so by the European Commission. In April of this year the networks appointed consultants Colin Stutt Consulting and KPMG to prepare integrated area plans and a cross-Border strategy.

Mr Colin Stutt told The Irish Times that the President of the European Commission, Mr Romano Prodi, had expressed the view that the cross-Border planning engaged in by the groups was an example to the Commission of how Eastern European countries could integrate with one another and with the EU.

European Commission personnel are also understood to be very impressed with "Project Border", which aims to set up computer web-sites and information offices which are "blind" to the Border.

"In this way a tourist can go into the tourist office in Enniskillen and ask for a list of hotels within a 20-mile radius and what they receive would include the southern hotels too," said Mr Stutt.

In a separate development yesterday, a seminar on "common goals for the Border region", organised with the aid of Interreg and facilitated by the EU Peace Programme, endorsed "people-led and people-focused local development across the Border."

The seminar, at which the keynote speaker was Mr Stutt, heard that there was a particular need to map out the future of cross-Border activity in the voluntary and community sector. Mr Paddy Logue, cross-Border co-ordinator of the EU-funded Peace Programme, said a new face-to-face strategy was required "to meet the needs of the socially excluded Border people on both sides and to advance the process of peace and reconciliation".