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ABSTRACT
The article aims to reflect on the development and prospects of cross-border cooperation between Scotland and England in a European perspective. Over the past 25 years the EU has supported specific programs of cooperation across the EU’s internal borders (INTERREG), which have allowed thousands of local and regional actors to work on common actions, projects or strategies to overcome long-standing processes of conflict, competition or lack of cooperation. The paper first discusses the added-value and shortcomings of these EU territorial cooperation initiatives, before considering recent developments and future options for cooperation across the Anglo–Scottish border. In capturing how the drive for local and regional actors within the EU to engage in trans-boundary cooperation is shaped by both the a priori existence of strong, historically-rooted cross-border relationships and by more pragmatic concerns to access new resources and policy ideas, the article goes on to examine how such motivations have played out across the Anglo–Scottish border. While acknowledging the benefits of trans-boundary co-operation, the article provides a more cautious assessment of the various barriers and asymmetries that can hinder cross-border co-operation and, in focusing on the area of spatial planning, highlights a particular challenge for economic and social collaborations across the Anglo–Scottish border. The article ends with a brief reflexion on the implications of the results of the 2016 Brexit referendum, before concluding with the most relevant lessons from European territorial cooperation initiatives for Anglo–Scottish cross-border cooperation.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Keith Shaw and John Tomaney for comments on the first draft of this paper.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. The paper is based on the author’s previous professional experience in an INTERREG IIIB program (2002–2004) as well as her past research on policy learning, trans-boundary cooperation and spatial planning in North-West Europe and in Catalonia (Spain).
2. For internal borders, INTERREG is funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) in the framework of EU regional policy. Additionally, cross-border cooperation initiatives at the external borders of the EU are co-funded by the Instrument for Pre-Accession (IPA) and the European Neighborhood Instrument (ENI).
3. For an up-to-date overview of those programs see the European Commission’s DG REGIO web page: http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/en/policy/cooperation/european-territorial/.
5. See the EGTC portal at: https://portal.cor.europa.eu/egtc/Pages/welcome.aspx for more information.
6. A good example of such a study, funded by INTERREG, is the Cross-Channel Atlas http://atlas-transmanche.certic.unicaen.fr/en/ (France-England).
7. To date without participation of the city councils of Newcastle, Sunderland, and Middlesbrough.
8. In the aftermath of the independence referendum, the House of Commons Scottish Affairs Committee carried out an inquiry on “Our Borderlands, Our Future”, from the perspective of the Scottish side of the border (House of Commons Citation2015). The committee gave full support to the Borderlands Initiative.
9. See http://www.seupb.eu/2014-2020Programmes/INTERREGV_Programme/INTERREGV_Overview.aspx and Taillon’s contribution in this special issue.
10. This has led to fresh calls for radical constitutional change to save the UK from disintegration, such as the case made by the all-party Constitution Reform Group (see http://www.constitutionreformgroup.co.uk/).
11. If the UK (and Scotland within it) leaves the EU, it will no longer be part of European Territorial Cooperation programs funded by EU regional policy. The UK borders will become an “external” EU border and could potentially be covered by some of the EU funding programs targeting cooperation with “third countries”—see http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/en/policy/cooperation/european-territorial/outside-the-eu/. It may be the case that UK actors can still participate in INTERREG projects if the UK government match-funds their participation to replace EU funding (as is currently the case with Swiss partners who can apply for funds from the Swiss national government to participate in INTERREG projects). If the UK leaves the EU and if Scotland becomes an independent state within the EU, the Anglo–Scottish border would become an “external” EU border, subject to the previous provisions. Moreover, Scottish actors would remain eligible for European Territorial Cooperation programs to cooperate with other EU partners (unlike their English counterparts). If the UK remains in the EU, and if Scotland later becomes independent and remains in the EU, the Anglo–Scottish border would become a border between two EU member states and therefore be eligible for a new EU-funded INTERREG A cross-border cooperation program.
12. In Scotland, the 2015 UK general election marked a spectacular victory for the SNP, which won 56 of the 59 Scottish seats, making the SNP the third largest party in the UK House of Commons.