Spatial justice in cross-border cooperation: assessment of EU tools addressing legal and administrative obstacles

The study discusses limited access to services in a cross-border context from the perspective of spatial justice. In line with recent studies of the topic, the authors consider the legal mismatches between the EU Member States as factors generating spatial inequalities. To compensate for these inequalities, the European Union has introduced redistributive (Interreg from 1989) and procedural (European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation from 2006) measures. However, these interventions cannot eliminate legal obstacles hampering the cross-border movement of ambulance cars, access to education, social services, quality public transport, etc., in border areas. From 2017, the European Union developed the three most recent instruments to target cross-border legal and administrative obstacles, namely the b-solutions initiative, the ISO1 Interreg specific objective and the Cross-Border Coordination Point enacted by the BRIDGEforEU Regulation. The authors introduce the concept of corrective justice and apply the approach for the evaluation of these three instruments. The study reflects the values and shortcomings of the instruments and includes a list of recommendations to compensate for these shortcomings.