Employment – Education – Economy

As part of a study on employment dynamics in the SaarLorLux Greater Region, this article analyses the employment and unemployment situation there and highlights the phenomenon of cross-border working that is rife there. As unemployment is high in certain areas in the region, exchanges have developed between countries in the form of cross-border working, which, although it creates jobs, raises complex issues on the taxation and social fronts.

The main goals of this work group are:
•    Highlighting issues, options, areas of responsibility, and specific activities of these regions;
•    Representation of their shared interest with the parliaments, legal entities, authorities and institutions on national and international levels;
•    Initiation, support and coordination of cooperation between the regions through Europe;
•    Encouragement to exchange experience and information to identify and coordinate the shared interests at the diverse issues and options, as well as to suggest potential solutions.
The work group of European border regions also does lobby work through the representation of the voice of the cross-border regions in the European institutes.

The Regionale Raumordnungsplan Region Trier (ROP) (regional spatial development plan for the region Trier) gives concrete form to the Landesentwicklungsprogramm Rheinland-Pfalz (LEP IV) (Rhineland-Palatinate Regional Development Program) for the Trier region. The ROP Trier 1985, with a partial update in 1995, contains the general planning objectives of the region. A reconfiguration is planned. The design for the reconfiguration originated in the year 2014.

This volume brings together contributions from the symposium "Cross-border Representations" (held September 16 and 17, 2010 at Mulhouse University Institute of Technology, University of Upper Alsace, UHA). It contains analysis of the practices, identities, forms of governance, and policy in cross-border territories such as the Greater Region, the PAMINA area, the border regions between France and Geneva, France and Spain, and other French border territories including Brazil and Africa. With twenty contributions, the book offers insights from politicians, historians, geographers, researchers in the field of information science, sociologists, and linguists.

In recent years, border work has become a major social, economic and human phenomenon in many countries. The authors of this chapter analyze the situation of border workers in Lorraine – a region which has seen a great increase in the number of border workers in the past – to ask, "how does the border impact on the different structural components of attitudes to employment and to border work (salary, social protection, mobility, qualifications etc.)?" (p. 125). After introducing the issue in question along with any methodological aspects implicated in conducting such an analysis, the authors describe how the flow of border workers has developed in the Greater Region. The main body of the chapter consists in analysis of the spatial, institutional, and socioeconomic dimensions of the employment relationship and border work.

The state development program is a cross-departmental and intersectoral spatial framework that underpins the development of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The State Development Program (LEP IV) is titled “Recognizing Challenges – Acting Sustainably – Shaping the Future.” The program, which came into force in 2008, deals with issues such as public services and the development of spaces. In particular, it deals with the challenges of demographic change and globalization.