Despite several decades of European integration, legal and administrative barriers still exist in the border areas, and new ones are emerging.

With the Council of the European Union blocking the European Cross-Border Mechanism Regulation, the conference looked at the issues facing citizens, local authorities and businesses, and why a tool to deal with such challenges is needed.

In the first panel, selected cases of the b-solutions initiative were presented on the topic. (B-Solutions is a program launched by the Commission and managed by the AEBR to identify and eliminate cross-border legal barriers.) The examples were collected from different geographical locations in the EU and covered different topics. In this context, it was presented by deputy director Judit Füzér dr. discusses the obstacles preventing cross-border retail trade of local products in the Croatian-Hungarian border region, based on the experiences of the Crossmarkets project.