Cross-border Cooperation in Action: Taking a Closer Look at the Galicia–North of Portugal European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation

ABSTRACT

The proposed hypothesis of this Special Issue is that the degree to which cross-border cooperation happens, results to some extent from the capacity the border community and/or a variety of social actors who exert some sort of influence over territorial matters have to reduce transaction costs. Cross-border cooperation has been going on for decades, and a lot has been theorized on the matter. This paper does not propose to contribute significantly towards the theoretical debate but to present some empirical conclusions using the Portugal–Spanish border, more specifically the Galicia–North of Portugal European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation. In this case study we consider the interaction between social actors and border community and how certain transaction costs have been addressed, seeking to identify variations in border effects and what has been the border community response. The debate will center on the aspect of the networks emerging over this border and their interaction with the borderland communities.

Acknowledgments

The author is particularly grateful to both Christian Leuprecht and Todd Hataley from the Special Issue side, as well as Iva Pires, the research project supervisor, for their useful feedback on previous drafts of this paper.

ORCiD

Emily Lange http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5212-1723

Notes

1 “Legal personality” and capacity recognized by EU law, according to Regulation (EC) 1082/2006 and reinforced by Regulation (EU) 1302/2013: the EGTC can acquire property, hire personnel, be party to legal proceedings (Art.1).

2 Nomenclature d’unités territoriales statistiques, the common classification of territorial units for statistics in Europe. NUTS I correspond to the territory of the respective country; NUTS II represents the regional level; NUTS III represents a sub-regional level.

3 Two separate interviews with both these entities were conducted during 2011, 2012 and 2013, but held interviews with other entities also.

4 Despite this narrative having been recently contested by Trillo-Santamaría and Paül (2014), this article agrees with Lange and Pires (2015) on the relative stability of this border taking into consideration that “borders in the past are not as we see them now” (Sassen 2006; Elden 2013).

5 According to the Council of Europe: https://portal.cor.europa.eu/egtc/CoRActivities/Pages/welcome.aspx, accessed August 31, 2015.

6 Other cross-border cooperation bodies remain outside these particular groupings; the percentages presented were deduced in relation to the total number of CB bodies, Northern cluster: 21 in 44; Southern cluster: 16 in 44.

7 Trillo-Santamaría’s research was conducted in 2010. His sample consisted of 268 people, with 5% certainty level and 90% confidence level.

Additional information

Funding

This work emerges within a PhD project and the author thanks the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT), within the Ministry for Education and Science of Portugal for funding this research through the following grant reference: SFRH/BD/79402/2011.