EUREGIO

EUREGIO is a cross-border region between the Netherlands and Germany and the first Euroregion. It was founded in 1958 as a German Eingetragener Verein, and has been converted in 2016 into a Public Body based on the Anholt treaty. Participating communities are in Niedersachsen (Osnabrück, Landkreis Osnabrück, southern part of Landkreis Emsland, Bentheim) and Nordrhein-Westfalen (Münsterland) in Germany and parts of the Dutch provinces Gelderland, Overijssel and Drenthe. Participating cities in the region are Münster, Osnabrück, Enschede, and Hengelo.

The origins of the EUREGIO date back to 1958 when municipal associations on both sides of the border organised the first cross-border conference. An association on the German side, the ‘Interessensgemeinschaft Rhein-Ems’ had been founded as an intermunicipal interest association in 1954 by representatives of local business and local authority politicians of the Westmünsterland and the Grafschaft Bentheim and Lingen Kreise. Among its objectives were the improvement of the local and regional infrastructures, which, in the eyes of the local elites, deserved more attention on the part of the Land and federal governments. On the Dutch side, this was followed by the establishment of an inter-municipal association.

In 1962, the more informal Interessensgemeinschaft was replaced by the ‘Kommunalgemeinschaft Weser-Ems’, a public law intermunicipal body. A similar process of intermunicipal integration occurred in the adjoining Dutch border area where the municipalities in the areas of Twente and Gelderland founded the Belangengemeenschap Twente-Gelderland (later Samenwerkingsverband Twente, today Regio Twente) with the explicit objective of co-operating more closely with the Interessensgemeinschaft Rhein-Ems (later Kommunalgemeinschaft Rhein-Ems). Subsequently, a second association, the Samenwerkingsverband Oost-Gelderland (today Regio Achterhoek), was established in the Dutch border area. Today, the Kommunalgemeinschaft Rhein-Ems, the Regio Twente and the Regio Achterhoek together form the EUREGIO.

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Wikipedia