Reducing border barriers for cross-border commuters in Europe via the EU b-solutions initiative

Abstract

For more than six decades, the European Union (EU) has promoted, one way or the other, systematic European territorial integration, understood as the process of reducing many kinds of cross-border barriers. This article debates the role of the EU b-solutions initiative in facilitating cross-border commuting in Europe via its contribution to a body of knowledge, which, in its practical application, has the potential to act as a resource to be drawn on in the mitigation of a wide range of legal-administrative barriers. A theoretical framework for relating cross-border commuting and cross-border barriers is set out, and existing cases from the b-solutions initiative are mapped against it. The authors demonstrate the framework’s value as a tool for determining the relevance of cross-border obstacles and solution factors for the issue of cross-border commuting. The paper concludes that the EU b-solutions contributed with concrete policy actions as well as a body of knowledge and solution-orientated planning towards reducing a range of legal-administrative cross-border barriers in Europe, and therefore represents a set of lebenswelt interventions contributing to the potential for increasing cross-border commuting flows.