Taking the demarcation of the current EU INTERREG-A (cross-border cooperation - CBC) programmes, EU border regions represent around 70% of the EU's territory and 50% of EU inhabitants. These numbers are a clear indication of the importance of the CBC process for the EU project. The EU has supported CBC programmes since 1990, with the launch of the first INTERREG-A Community Initiative. Since then, they have expanded to promote territorial development and reduce border barriers in all parts of Europe, following the enlargement of the EU. Recent surveys and studies conclude, however, that EU border regions generally perform less well economically than non-border regions, and that EU citizens continue to be faced with all sorts of barriers in their daily lives when crossing EU borders. In this context, Prof. Roberta Capello proposed a novel methodological approach to measure the border effects across EU borders. She measured the GDP loss due to administrative barriers in all EU border areas, while highlighting the fact that the costs of "non-Europe" were still high. On this point, she concluded that most of these costs derived from suboptimal use of resources and from the direct impact of legal and administrative obstacles. Under this less than positive scenario, she suggested that European cross-border cooperation policy should therefore be targeted to the improvement of governance of local resources, rather than addressing only the issue of new investments. The following speaker, Prof. Stefanie Dühr, addressed another crucial aspect related to the European CBC process: obstacles to cross-border cooperation in spatial planning. To sum up, she highlighted the many challenges of implementing joint infrastructures and services across national borders, and notably the incompatibility of national rules and norms, taxation, etc. In more detail, she pinpointed three main types of current obstacle to cross-border planning; (i) obstacles in the form of costs; (ii) institutional obstacles and (iii) administrative and legal obstacles. Finally, she concluded that European border regions had great potential as laboratories for spatial (and European) integration. However, there were still few examples of cross-border planning being incorporated into day-to-day practice on a regular basis. Finally, Prof. Eduardo Medeiros debated the relevance of using Territorial Impact Assessment (TIA) evaluation procedures to assess EU CBC programmes (INTERREG-A). As the main arguments, he invoked both the vast territorial coverage of these programmes, and the fact that they supported all the main dimensions of territorial development (economic competitiveness, social cohesion, environmental sustainability, territorial governance and spatial planning). He then presented a tried and tested TIA tool which could be used for this purpose, while suggesting that the focus be placed on the main barrier effect dimensions (socio-cultural, accessibility, institutional-legal, economic-technological and environmental-heritage) so as to better organise the evaluation of such programmes.