Under the leadership of Dr Pavel Branda (ECR Group's spokesperson on Territorial Cohesion Policy), a citizens dialogue was organised by the European Committee of the Regions in his region in Liberec, in the Czech Republic on 2 November 2017. The event brought together local and regional politicians from the UK, Ireland and Germany with citizens for a reflection on Europe and cross-border cooperation.

In past decades in Europe, a lot of effort was put into the development of cross-border cooperation and the opening up of borders. Is there a danger of closing them again? What impact will it have on the lives of people and the economy of border regions? The seminar tackled these topics from the perspective of local self-governments. The seminar looked at two concrete examples. The example of the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland in the UK was discussed, where these cross-border cooperation questions are becoming most urgent nowadays with the UKs pending withdrawal from the EU. The current situation in the German, Polish, and Czech Euroregion Neisse-Nisa-Nysa was also discussed.

The seminar took place at the regional university (Technical university Liberec) with more than 80 students and staff attending the seminar. Among the CoR panellists were Jerry Lundy (Sligo County Council, Ireland) and Arnold Hatch (Craigavon Borough Council, Northern Ireland (UK)). The two local politicians presented the biggest achievements of cross-border cooperation on the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, UK and also touched on the possible implications of closing this border as a result of the UKs withdrawal from the EU.

Heinz Lehmann (Member of the Saxony Parliament, Germany) and Martin Půta (President of the Liberec Region and a President of Euroregion Nisa, Czech Republic) underlined the importance of cooperation for the collective prosperity of the localities. Dr Pavel Branda (Deputy Mayor of Rádlo municipality and Vice-president of AEBR) then presented overall European perspective and shared examples from other parts of Europe.