Good practice examples show that a combination of legislation and complementary measures are important factors for successful and efficient cross-border cooperation; this includes improved cooperation and mutual understanding, creating trust between stakeholders, enhanced administrative cooperation and coordination, capacity building, addressing multilingual issues. The study, carried out by the European Parliament Research Service, assessed the potential impacts of three options and resulted in the observation that the policy option, combining both legislative and non-legislative tools, would have the highest potential to address the wide range of different obstacles and fit the variety of border regions contexts. Based on a realistic assumption of removing only 20% of obstacles for all border regions, the study estimates a total benefit of €123 billion per year; representing around 1% of total 2019 EU value and creation of 1 million of additional jobs. The option includes the adoption of a streamlined proposal for a European cross-border mechanism, simplified procedures, a toolbox of solutions for Member States, with which Member States retain the ownership of the choice of the instrument to use an existing agreement or to activate a European cross-border mechanism. 

EPRS study: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document/EPRS_ATA(2023)751452 

Prioritising the options can lead this debate in the wrong direction. The legal tool should define a framework, a process and minimum standards and not necessarily pre-define the solutions. A framework can strengthen established cooperation intuitions, ease bilateral agreements and by that reducing the administrative burden of finding a solution. In fact the answer should be “option 5”: A smart combination of option 1 to 4.