Suchergebnisse

At head of title: Travaux du Comité d'études. ; Cover-title. ; Mode of access: Internet.

The intermunicipal, cross-border co-operation in the European border regions has experienced a dynamic thrust of development in the last few years. This was facilitated by the changes in the political, legal and financial framework conditions, to which the community initiative INTERREG provided a considerable contribution. An additional factor in the Saar-Lor-Lux region is that subunits form in the actual border regions within the generously measured, regional work areas of the interregional co-operation, characterised by a fairy homogenous regional structure. Using three case examples, it is demonstrated that cross-border organisation structures have developed within these small regions on a municipal level. These are being institutionalised more and more. Using the regional development model of the network of cities, which is being discussed with regards to its cross-border applicability, we can in this context speak of local co-operation networks. In the case of the Agglomération Transfrontalière du Pôle Européen de Développement (PED) in the Belgian-French-Luxembourg state triangle, the participating local authority districts and government authorities have joined together to form an association and maintain a joint Observatoire de l'Urbanisme, responsible among other things since 1996 for the registration and processing of regional data as well as for the development of land use concepts. The M eeting of Mayors and/or the Ronde des Trois Frontières, responsible for the development of tourism in the German-French-Luxembourg Moselle Valley, are considerably less formal network structures. The co-operation between the border local authority districts was institutionalised in the Saar-Rosselle region in the form of the Intermunicipal Association for Work. The latter maintains a co-operation office with the Saarbrücken city association, principally responsible for co-ordination tasks with regards to current and developing, cross-border projects. Despite the depicted structural and legal impediments, an increased institutionalisation of the co-operations can be observed; this goes hand in hand with a topical diversification, which deincreasingly covers subject areas which have been avoided up until now because of the potential conflicts found therein, as demonstrated by the example of the joint commercial area development in the case of the Agglomération du PED. These observed case examples deal with increasingly integrated core regions within a border region which can provide important impulses for the interregional and also international dialogue. At the same time, practical measures were implemented on this level, which are perceived by the local population in day to day life and therefore have greater identity-forming effects. In this context, these measures can provide an essential or even exemplary contribution to overcoming the interior borders of the EU. These approaches can be understood as being a basis for integration "from the bottom up" which make a greater sustainability and acceptance in the various sectors of day to day living more probable, unlike the top-down forces which dominate the realisation of the European common market or the currency union.

The Treaty of Versailles came into force on January 10,1920. Many of the matters with which it dealt were not definitely settled but placed within transitional régimes to be liquidated by decisions of the Principal Allied and Associated Powers, by commissions, by plebiscites or by other procedures or events within periods of time stated with more or less definiteness. The maximum time specified for any of these transitional régimes was 15 years. That period applied to the Rhineland occupation and to the régimes of the Saar valley and Upper Silesia. In the first two of these instances the 15 years dated from the coming into force of the Treaty of Versailles. In fact the Rhineland occupation was voluntarily terminated long before 1935. The Saar plebiscite was held during 1935, resulting in the transfer of the territory to Germany.

On December 23, 1921, the Swiss Federal Council received a note from the French Embassy to the effect that the Council of the League of Nations had entrusted the French government with the transportation of the international troops called to supervise the plebiscite to be held in the contested area between Poland and Lithuania. It had been decided, the note stated, to transport the Belgian, British, and Spanish troops through Switzerland, and France now requested the Swiss government to grant them free passage. Although the contingents were not to participate in war, but only to watch over a plebiscite to be held under the auspices of the League, the Swiss government refused the permission sought. At the time of the plebiscite in the Saar territory, the Federal Council took a similar attitude. It refused to permit Italian troops to pass through Swiss territory on their way to the Saar Valley.