What happens when a French healthcare professional is the closest doctor to an injured person in the Spanish territory? Nowadays, without the validation of a diploma by the Order of Doctors and Nurses of the neighboring country, these professionals are not authorized to intervene anywhere except on the territory of obtaining their diploma.

To overcame this administrative obstacle, the Working Community of the Pyrenees (CTP, according to its French & Spanish acronym) sent a proposal for a pilot project to the B-Solutions call of the European Commission managed by the Association of European Border Regions (AEBR). The CTP’s project is the only one of the nine chosen by AEBR that will work in the Pyrenees cross-border region.

The aim of this project is to achieve collaboration agreements among the French State, the Spanish Autonomous Communities and the Principality of Andorra that allow the signature of a convention that erase administrative problems and enable cross-border emergency health intervention. With this new project, the CTP aims to improve the emergency healthcare for the 15 million inhabitants of the Pyrenees.

‘When Medical Emergencies Erase Borders’ is made up of health agencies and organisations from all Pyrenean territories of Spain and France: the Cerdanya Cross-border Hospital, l’Agence Régionale de la Santé Occitane, l’Agence Régionale de la Santé Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Emergentziak Osakidetza of Euskadi, Servicio de Protección Civil Navarra, Urgencias y Emergencias Sanitarias 061 de Aragón and Nostra Senyora de Meritxell Hospital, as well as the CTP itself.

The project will be developed in three phases:

• a first phase during which the agreements between the competent health bodies present in the partnership will be drawn up.
• In a second step, signing of technical collaboration agreements between the different Orders of Doctors with the objective to allow the temporary registration of emergency doctors (Orders of Doctors from the five French departments, from the five Spanish provinces and Andorra).
• The last phase will be dedicated to setting up a technical pilot between the emergency services of two hospitals (Perpignan in France and Puigcerdá in Spain), with a view to optimizing resources and providing care.

The project is a pilot initiative that aims to overcame cross-border obstacles of legal and administrative nature in the field of health and replicate these actions in other EU territories. It is promoted by the Directorate General for Regional Policy of the European Commission and managed by the Association of European Border Regions (AEBR).